History of Oil Paint

Oil painting is about 600 years old. It reached a fine perfection with the Dutch Masters. They’d made oil painting very popular by 1650. But artists still needed the training of a chemical engineer to mix their paints.

So art became associated with alchemy. Physicians and artists both used the same ingredients. Paints were laced with a physician’s remedies — mercury, oils, ivory, and so on. Painters bought their materials at apothecary shops. They even shared the same patron saint with doctors. That was St. Luke.

By the 1700s the demand for oil paints had led to new subspecialties among painters. The colourman now mixed paint and sold it to artists. He radically changed the business of oil painting. For example, specialised portrait painters used those premixed paints in large shops. One such painter might do three oils of the same subject at once.

While the colourman played a part in professionalizing painting, he also helped give birth to the amateur painter. With premixed paint, anyone could go off on his own.

And what do amateurs always do? They experiment. They create mutations. They drive change. So, while the new technologies for containing paint drove amateurs, amateurs drove painting.

Colourmen sold the first premixed paints in pig’s bladders. Then they sold paint in syringes — rather like grease-guns. By 1800 you could buy oil paint in tin tubes. Painters in the Romantic period could pack off to the country to paint rainbows, sunsets, and haystacks. They were free to capture the moment.

As cameras appeared, painters had to redefine their own purpose. Equipped with really portable oils, they changed the game. Instead of reporting the world objectively, they gave us their self-expressive response to a far more fluid world.

Still, the new tube paints had problems. The ingredients that gave paint a toothpaste texture also made it turn yellow over time. The impressionists craved a brilliance they couldn’t find in a tube. They went back to relearn paint-making.

Van Gogh experimented with bright, thick-textured paints. He sometimes failed. But he honed the new Impasto technique — often painting with a knife instead of a brush. And in Van Gogh we read, once more, the terrible complexity of technological change.

For if putting paint in tubes gave rise to Van Gogh, Van Gogh knew he had to go back to invention. To finish the very revolution that spawned him, he had to become an amateur once more. He had to reinvent the technology of painting before he could invent a new vision of the world for all of us to see.

Oil Paints

• These are pigments mixed with a binder and medium; they cannot be mixed with water but rather mixed with linseed oil or turpentine to thin them.
• Brushes need to be cleaned with turpentine ( Citric is non toxic) or special brush cleaner.
• Like with acrylic paint different mediums can be added to create effects and textures.
• It can be applied with soft, stiff bristled brushes depending on the desired effect, or with a palette knife for more tactile qualities. Finger painting is becoming increasingly popular because of the thick textures it can create.
• Layers can be built up to create translucency. This requires applying diluted oil paint over opaque sections. It is called glazing.

Oil paint needs a special primed surface before beginning. These can be used for acrylic paints as well.

• The most common is canvas attached to wooden stretcher arms of varying length.
• This is then painted with gesso as an undercoat (white acrylic house paint can also be used if gesso not available).
• Canvas boards (cardboard covered in canvas) are also available as are fresco board (particle board covered in linen paper and gesso). I

Choosing a surface for Oil Painting – http://www.winsornewton.com/na/discover/tips-and-techniques/oil-colour/choosing-a-surface-for-oil-painting-us

If you have a drawing you would like to develop with oil paint you can photocopy it or draw it directly onto a piece of canvas paper and trial it in a range of different paints/colours and techniques.

Using Acrylics as Underpainting Layers for Oil Paint

When acrylic colours first became widely available in the 1950’s and 60’s, there was a reluctance to recommend overpainting them with oil colours because of suggestions that this might be unsound – notably the fact that the acrylic colour does not become brittle with age like oil colour, so an inflexible oil colour film over a flexible acrylic film could lead to cracking.

In practice these fears have not been confirmed and at Winsor & Newton we are not aware of a single case of cracking caused by painting in oil colour over acrylic, either as a complaint from a customer or in laboratory tests.

However, it is recommended that if you are overpainting acrylics with oil then keep the acrylic layer thin, absorbent and fairly “lean” to limit its flexibility. It is still not recommended to paint with oil colour over thick impasto layers of acrylics, due to the flexibility differences in the layers during the drying process.

Glazing Technique
Often a lengthy process of applying layer upon layer, glazing is one technique that benefits from a professional-grade medium This may improve the drying time. flow of the paint and create less visible brush strokes. Blending & Glazing Medium improves transparency and depth, before drying to a durable, glossy finish.

Scumbling Technique

Scumbling allows you to build up multiple layers of ‘broken’ (speckled or deliberately cracked) colour. The base layer peeks through, giving a sense of depth, texture and colour variation to your work.

While the technique can be skilfully achieved with either opaque or transparent colours, the effect is stronger when opaque shades are used. The base layer needs to be thinned with a medium such as turpentine as well as being lighter than the upper layer.

Stippling Technique

Sometimes, blending a light area of oil paint into a dark area does not give off the smoothest glow. Many artists choose to add incandescence to their finished piece by using a stippling effect.

For stippling, the best brush to use is one of the Artists’ hog brushes. Its stiffness, when used with thick, viscous colour, creates a strong, stippled texture.

Impasto Technique

Coming from the Italian for ‘dough,’ impasto is a particularly popular technique for exploring texture. By applying thick layers of paint with the right brush and mediums, brush strokes can remain plainly visible and create an highly textured effect. Rembrandt, for instance, employed this technique to pick out jewels on a costume; while Van Gogh used it for expressive purposes.

When seeking an impasto effect, impastomedium adds texture, thickens rapidly and increases transparency. Your painting will be touch-dry in 1-6 days, being particularly useful when layering for an ultra-thick impasto effect.

Introduction to oil painting demonstration

Painting with glazing and wax medium demonstration

Understanding the Drying Times for Oil Paints and colours

Artists need time to think. What worked well today may need to be changed, altered or improved on tomorrow. One of the best things about working in oil colour is that it takes longer to dry than other media, allowing this thinking process to happen and providing the flexibility for changes to be made. However, not all colours dry at the same rate. Generally colours become touch dry in thin films in 2-12 days but the different reaction of each pigment when mixed with oil results in different drying times which will affect your work.

Knowing more about these drying rates can help you avoid the problem of having slow drying under layers affecting faster layers above and causing cracking. Remember one of the three rules of oil painting is ‘slow drying over fast drying’ – fast drying colours should be used continuously as under layers.

This is a guide to drying rates:

Artists’ Oil Colour
Fast Drying – around 2 days
Permanent Mauve [manganese], Cobalt Blues, Prussian Blue, Raw Sienna, Umbers, Flake, Foundation and Cremnitz Whites [lead].

Medium drying – around 5 days
Winsor Blues and Greens [Phthalocyanines], Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Violet and Greens, Ultramarine Blues, Mars colours [synthetic iron oxides], Sap Green, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Ochres, Cadmiums, Titanium White, Zinc White, Lamp Black, Ivory Black, Pyrroles, Bismuth Yellow, Perylenes.

Slow drying – more than 5 days
Winsor Yellows and Orange (Arylides), Quinacridones, Alizarin Crimson.

Winton Oil Colour
Fast drying  – around 2 days
Prussian Blue, Raw Sienna, Umbers.

Medium Drying – around 5 days
Phthalo Blue and Viridian Hue (Phthalocyanines), Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blues, Synthetic Iron Oxides, Ochres, Titanium White, Zinc White, Lamp Black, Ivory Black.

Slow Drying – more than 5 days
Cadmium Hues (Arylamides), Permanent Rose (Quinacridone), Alizarin Crimson Hue.

Artisan Water Mixable Oil Colour
When Artisan is thinned with water, the water evaporates from the paint film quite rapidly, leaving behind a conventional film of oil that dries through contact with oxygen in the air. This means that the paint film is different to that of conventional oil colour, for example you may notice that the surface is very slightly tacky, which is normal.

As with traditional oil colour, Artisan colours have different drying rates. Here is a guide to their drying rates :

Fast drying – around 2 days
Prussian Blue, Umbers.

Medium Drying – around 5 days
Cadmium Hues, Phthalo Blue (red shade) and Phthalo Greens, Siennas, French Ultramarine, Synthetic Iron Oxides, Ochres, Titanium White, Zinc White, Lamp Black, Ivory Black.

Slow drying – more than 5 days
Cadmiums, Permanent Rose (Quinacridone), Permanent  Alizarin Crimson.

Griffin Alkyd Fast Drying Oil Colour
Griffin Fast Drying Oil Colour has exceptional drying qualities. You can work with all colours in the range on your palette for between 4 and 8 hours. These become touch dry on the canvas in 18 to 24 hours. However, remember that the thickness of the paint and the temperature of the room you are working in will also affect the drying times of your work.

Try to avoid the temptation of varnishing your work as soon as you have finished. The colour needs to be completely dry and we recommend waiting at least 3 months before varnishing.

Oilbar
This is wonderful to work with on the canvas and the colours will become touch dry in 2 to 7 days.