I think it must have been 7 or 8 years ago when I first tried W&N watermixable oil paints. I made one small painting with it and I stopped using it right there. The paint felt very stiff and it would dry indeed very slowly. I was just not feeling it. About 1.5y ago I gave it another try, but this time with Cobra paints. I should say that in general, I'm not a fan of Royal Talens at all (perhaps it's got to do with me being Flemish haha), but I must say that since I started using those Cobra paints I changed my mind completely about water mixable oils. The Cobra paints feel much much MUCH less stiff than the W&N. The overall experience of painting with these is much closer to painting with solvent-thinned oils. The different pigments mix very well (though the results are not completely the same as with solvent-thinned oil paints). I try to avoid mixing with water as much as I can. I feel the treshold for the pigments to lose it's even spread may be lower with water mixable oils, meaning it's harder to have even spread out pigment when diluting with a lot of water, compared to diluting "normal" oils with solvent (to get a wash). Usually I'll thin down with water only in the beginning, and once the initial compo is down I just use paint. The Cobra paints also dry slow, but hey it's oil paint. If I paint in my sketchbook I use Liquin to make it dry faster. It works well with Liquin, at least for me. I think the easy workaround is to use 2 sketchbooks and alternate (or three if you are very prolific). I always work on gessoed carriers, be it paper, MDF, wood or whatever. Try the Cobra paints (no I'm not paid to say this ;) ) Hope this is valuable for anyone.
So would you say there'd be a big difference if I gesso'd my oil painting paper? One thing I find is it isn't very smooth application (without some dilution or medium) on paper.
@@callmedeno If you don't seal the paper (which is what the gesso does), the oil will be sucked into the paper. That's fine, really, but the oil will be sucked into your paper very quickly so you will need more paint to come to the state where you can smoothly blend your paints. Some say painting on ungrounded surfaces is blasphemy as you ignore the basic painting rules, but every artist is free to do what she/he wants imho. One of my teachers once said: "If someone thinks the painting is worth it, they will have it restored if need be". If you do ground your paper (or any other carrier for that matter) it's strongly recommended to use sandpaper to smoothen it. A smoother surface is kinder to your brushes. If you don't sand your gesso'ed surface, your brushes will wear out a lot faster (and I mean a LOT faster). Brushes are expensive, gesso is cheap. The higher nr the grain of your sanding paper, the smoother the surface will be after sanding it down. Personally, I sand down every gesso layer I put on and I usually put 2 or 3 layers on. Some prefer not to sand down because they like to have a textured ground to start on. I feel texture can sometimes work against a nice result as well, especially in portraiture, so I sand it down and create the textures I want while painting. My motto is that if you put a lot of effort in preparing your canvas (paper, cardboard, wood, whatever you want to paint on), you will surely do your very best while painting in an attempt not to waste the efforts you made during the preparation stage. Just my 2 cents.
I mix water with a 2-3 drops of water mixable medium in a jar that can be closed. Shake it, and it become like milky water. That's I use for thinning and glazing wamo paint You need to figure out the ratio of water to medium yourself, it depends on the weather where you paint, the style, etc. I never mix with only water. Wamo paint IS oil paint with some emulsifier in it. When water evaporated it is an oil paint with all the characteristics. Most mistake made by treating it like acrylic. Too much water mixed into wamo paint. If you want only use water, use a dropper and mix with a few drops of water into the paint, do not overwater it. Best to use the mix above. I use a tiny caviar jar to mix it,3 quarter water and 3 drops wamo medium. When you glazing just put more medium into the jar, 2 or 3 drops for every subsequent layer. Shake it. This mix will stay emulsified over time, so u can use it for weeks. Good luck.
@@LightshamanaDhyana thanks for sharing your method. I only dillute with a tiny bit of water incthe beginning to add an imprimatura to not have to work on a white surface (which I dislike). At best thus becomes a rough composition but often it's just a coloured layer. I try to avoid any mediums except Liquin if I want faster drying or glazing (rarely). One of my teachers was a restaurateur. He said to keep the mixtures you apply as simple as possible. From a chemical pov that's best for the longest time before deterioration. This goes as far as using simple, lightfast pigments in a limited palette.
I found W&N water soluble oils to be very tacky and difficult to control but then tried Cobra which have a completely different feel - softer, soother and buttery - need less of their oil to help them flow and the surface tacks up enough to paint over the next day. I only use water for initial lay in and cleaning brushes, not as a medium, as they have their own thinners and driers for this and water alone can cause adhesion problems. No experience yet of long term drying times but paintings seem dry to the touch after a couple of weeks. Hope this helps with decisions of whether to persevere with these sort of oils.
Very late comment here, but I thought I'd explain about water miscible/mixable oils. The oil film itself dries exactly as normal oils do, although some brands have driers added to the paints to improve drying time. Some brands try to make every color dry in an equal amount of time as well, but only have some success as the drying time between Burnt Sienna and Quinacridones is immense. If you mixed water into your paint that creates an emulsion, and that's the only thing that's really different with the water miscible oils. Once the water has evaporated they dry just as traditional oils by oxidation. This is really no different than your turpentine, etc. evaporating before the oxidation of the paint film really gets going. Once dry the oil film can no longer be modified with water but turpentine and other traditional oil solvents will react exactly as expected with the oil film. In general I don't recommend using water in your painting medium. There are many painting mediums on the market that you can use instead that don't break down the paint film, granulate your glazes/washes, or cause a drying shift like Acrylics or Watercolor. W&N Artisan - horrible and pasty, student grade - normal drying time, same as Artist Oil Color Grumbacher MAX - OK, some oil/pigment (binder) separation and some colors are oilier than others - normal drying time, same as Grumbacher Pretested Holbein DUO - Very consistent and softer than the first two in this list, basically zero binder separation - very large range of colors and high pigment load - fast drying time, earths dry in a day or two with no medium Daniel Smith - very smooth/oily and more like traditional oils out of the tube, but I've noticed a lot of binder separation - very few truly opaque colors - normal drying time Cobra - Haven't tried them yet Varnishes: Retouch and picture varnishes work as normal. You don't need water soluble varnishes but if you want to avoid solvents there are some available. Something to note: Acrylics dry solely through evaporation, just like watercolor. They do not oxidize.
Water mixing oils can be used as traditional oils which means you don't have to mix them with water. You can mix them with oil or other mediums ( like fast drying medium) for traditional oils with no problems at all. You can use them with traditional oils together as well. Water can be used only for cleaning. This is an option paint for those people with allergies or non ventilated studios. It's just one molecule changed and doesn't contain metals or other things that might be a health hazard.
In everyday conversation, we pause frequently. That has a function in that it allows us to take in and digest what's being said. In the case of the edited discourse that typically accompanies a RU-vid video, where pauses are clipped to make a gap-free presentation, it becomes really challenging to absorb what's being said. I end up just switching off the sound because it becomes so relentless that I lose concentration, particularly when what's being said doesn't relate directly to what's being done. It's almost as though the voice over is the main component and the painting is just a visual accompaniment, rather than the other way round. It doesn't have to be either or but I watch these type of videos to see how other artists work. The voice over is useful but secondary in my view. I'd like to hear a simpler exposition that relates more directly to the painting process and that comes at a less frenetic pace. Very few RU-vid creators understand that issue. It's a cultural thing. Everybody does that weird, unnatural voice over thing because....Everybody does it. I think it came from the time when video duration time was constrained and inexperienced vloggers hesitated a lot in their speech.
Hello! Awesome episode! Would you happen to know/remember which episode you mentioned/talked about John Ruggeri - the SVA drawing teacher? I currently have him as a teacher and would love to share it with him :) Thanks!
Hola Nicolás, como siempre, un trabajo fantástico. Puedo entender completamente los sentimientos cuando uno cambia el medio. El resultado sin embargo se siente muy similar. Puedo notar la diferencia en la primera capa que es delgada, muy proxima a la acuarela. p. Ej en la de hoy, el tono gris del cabello se logró casi qur con la primera capa y uno puede sentir un poco el cambio de color durante la duración del video. Olvidé mencionar, aunque ya lo ha dicho los tres días de esta semana, de ser posible, sería chevere una semana con golden open acrylics. Un abrazo.
Actually well oxidized oil film would not be dissolved by turpentine. Solvents can and do interfere with resins - hence varnish can be safely removed, but the oil beneath is intact... maybe tho, I'm not an expert in Titian's technique. Maybe he used something specific
Hey Karol! I may disagree with you on this one. Oxidized oil only creates a skin, but even when dry, oil molecules are always moving underneath the surface. In essence they're still very much so alive. And the skin of oil paint doesn't transform into anything different than oxidized oil which is very much so still soluble in turpentine. There's no reason to believe that if you take a rag with turps and you start scrubbing away you can lift a whole lot of paint from even a 500 yr old painting.
Hey Nicolas! Just a thought about your drying issue with the water mix oils. You can still use standard oil painting mediums with them- liquid, alkyd, etc to speed up drying. Maybe this cancels out the point of removing volatile stuff, but would allow you to still play with the transparent washes without using turps. I always appreciate seeing how you are pushing yourself to understand painting in new ways. Cheers!
have you ever experienced using something new, surface or whatever, or even coming back to something you haven't used for a while, where your first try is satisfactory and smooth then the second try is miserable? This is usually what happen to me in painting as well as cooking, still can't understand why
Hi Nicholas, When you say you're minimising your use of solvents but you're using liquin, I don't understand. I'm so sensitive to liquin, I can't use it. Are they making a non solvent liquin now?
Muy buen trabajo, no tenía mucho que decir pero como se que al algoritmo de youtube le gustan los comentarios pues aquí lo dejo ya que dejar solo like me parece poco :D