Saturday, January 17, 2015

Water Mixable Oil Paints



20 cm x 15 cm, Real Professional Oil

When i started out i had the stupid idea that painting with real oil paint stinks. Therefore I bought myself water mixable paints (brand: Artisan, Windsor&Newton). In the first few month I was quite happy. Up to a point when I reached the first brushwork assignments of the Virtual Art Academy (absolutely outstanding learning program for painters by Barry J. Raybould). I just couldn't get the same brush stroke quality onto the canvas as some of my friends there. I tried everything, like buying the Artisan brushes made for this paint, other brushes, different painting grounds and solvents. Nothing worked. This paint kept tending to stick to the brush. I tried it with the other watermixable brands, Lukas and Cobra. Well, guess how i think about those...
Finally, in March 2013 a friend (thanks Christine!) pointed me to the material section of Carol Marine's blog (thanks). There it was, the simple recepy for a painting medium without terpentine (2 parts lindseed oil, 1 part stand oil, 1 part mineral spirit like Liquin). When i used conventional professional oil paints the first time it felt like switching from sneakers to running shoes. The find the actual brand of running shoes didn't matter that much (I now mostly use Schmincke's Norma and Mussini brands) compared to those sneakers.


This painting ships with 8 tubes (37 ml) of Artisan watermixable paints free of charge. The hues are shown in the painting. I bought them about 2 years ago. Some of them are partly used, the overall shortfall is less than one tube. There are people that do not even have sneakers. Others use sneakers and are faster or paint better than me, with whatever equipment I choose. The latter bothers me more...
Like always, there is a 14 day return policy on this painting. If you don't like it in person, just send it back and i will rebook the money. However, the deal here is that you must not send me these 8 Artisan tubes back. You will have to dispose them yourself!
Finally, please pay attention to the beautiful box for shipping my paintings. It has been developed (and is built on demand) by a German engineer. Thanks Dad!

2 comments:

Charlotte said...

This is a great post! As always, I love your humor as well as your art. And thanks for including the medium recipe. (Does it come in large and small, too?) Using water-mixable oils myself, I've been on the verge of giving up on sports shoes entirely and just traipse around in my watercolor sandals. But maybe I ought to give running shoes a try.

Unknown said...

Thanks Charlotte and yes there are a lot of options to get around the smell without loosing the feel of real oil paints. Think it is important to keep trying different things, here and there. Sometimes, when i work outside I do use a small amoumt terpentine for my intinial washes.
Watercolor is not like running, it is free climbing ;-)