Hello everyone! I am new here and wanted some advice. I’ve used oil paints in the past and really enjoyed them, but due to exposure to solvents at work I am quite sensitive to them now, even odorless like Gamsol.
So, my question is have any of you had success using oil paints without the use of any solvents? I know generally adding oil to make the paint less viscous isn’t ideal due to dry time, but I want to check my options. Thank you.
I have never used them so I cannot say how good they are, but Winsor and Newton make a water soluable oil paint: https://www.winsornewton.com/na/paint/oil/artisan-water-mixable-oil/
I am not sure what you mean by paints without solvents. Do you mean buying pigments and vehicle seperately and mix them yourself? Or do you mean without adding any additional solvents. If the latter, airbrush ready paints should not need any additional solvent. Depends on the brand.
You can use oil paints straight from the tube, without thinning them. They’ll just be rather thick, and it will be hard to get a finish without brush strokes or without obscuring fine surface detail.
What are you painting? Is it figures, which is what most painters using oils paint, or something else? You might do better with water-based acrylics, which you can thin with water or isopropyl, and which can be applied by hand in thin enough coats to avoid or eliminate brush strokes.
Hi! I am painting figures as well as busts. I love the blending abilities of oil, but gained a sesitivity to solvent so I was trying to see if anyone had experience with alternatives, perhapes water mixable oils. I use acrylics currently and while they work, the work flow isn’t the same.
I was referring to using oil paints without thinning them using a solvent such as gamsol. Since using them straight from the tube I would imagine is far too difficult.
In art work I’ve thinned with linseed oil. In fact the wet base method for painting wet on wet, is called liquid white. I make my own, 50/50 Titanium white and linseed oil. But plan on that being wet for three full days. Then tacky for x days. But that’s the floating surface used to base coat with and to create the misty mountain or water feature effect.
You can make the wet base with acrylic too. It will stay wet for hours vs days.
In the end with oils, unless using one of the water soluable oils, as mentioned about/ from WN , you still need solvent to clean the brushes. Anyway, I cut my oil paints ( all Gamblin paints) with a little linseed oil because I want the long dry and the creamy texture of how they work, so as to feather with a big fluffy makeup brush or goat hair mop brush, even the next day…
I do have water soluable oil stains, they work fine with water. Also water clean up. Or you can use oil.
By the way, even Gamblin washes off my hands with soap and water freely. I think the trick is the brushes, good oil brushes even have warnings on them not to have the hairs in water. They are meant to be in oil. I use my taklon acrylic brushes with the stains I mentioned. Now I haven’t tried the WN water soluable oil paints but they do have that mild sweet oil paint odor. If they work like my Duncan stains, you could have a winner there.
Yeah, that’s the carrier in many oil paints. Many painters will put a blob of the paint on a piece of brown paper, or cardboard, to leach out the linseed oil and concentrate the pigment, but he could certainly go the other way and thin them with more. As long as he’s not sensitive to linseed oil, too.
There are a few oils that can thin the oil paints. And in linseed, boiled linseed will dry faster than raw linseed. But since I’ve never painted figures or busts in oil, I’ll rest now.
My thing is scenic art on canvas or canvas board with oil. Or on models just washes.
I just wanted to add that some artists ( more and more really) just get a cleaning pot with the wire spring for hanging the brushes from. Then put refined safflowor oil in the pot and suspend their oil brushes in that, even between painting sessions. So they go without spirits all together. Just wipe your brush to be used in paper towels and move ever onward.
Generally safflower oil and walnut oil are non toxic. Also Gamblin oil paints are reported to be non toxic as well. I believe refined linseed is also non toxic but there is low toxitity in boiled linseed oil, as that has some extra dryers in it. But non of these are like any of the spirits are to have in your environment.
Hi’
I too am relatively new to Acrylics. 8yrs vs 62yrs with regular enamels. I was advised to find a brand I like and then follow their recommandations for flow etc.Tamiya Acrylics seem to flow well for me on figures. I just adjust my amount of retarder.