How to Oil Paint with ZERO Toxic Fumes 

Your art teachers should be fired for not informing you

Acrylic is bad too

@@jjk2one omg really? aaa :'0

@@PK-se2jh yes really martians make it

​​​@@jjk2oneit's not.

Also the best non-toxic paints, in my experience, are Geneva oil paints. And the pigment load is great!

@J.Shelby That's the thing - I personally didn't mind the smell at all and it was making me feel more artistic using the good old turps like the grand masters of the past. It is also super cheap so you can fill in a whole bucket with it, throw in your brushes after each session and never bother washing them. We live and learn that there ain't such thing in life as a free lunch

@J.Shelby what about acrylic ?

@J.Shelby Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the use of turpentine. Mineral spirits should do just fine for most folks. Never tried water-soluble oils so can't comment on those

@J.Shelby Cobra paints are good. You can thin them with water. A lot of people like their 91 medium. They will mix with regular oil paints, up to a point, like 1/3rd or 1/2" and they still work as water soluble, which is nice if there is a paint you can't get in their product line. Cobra has a whole course online about them, and it is very good. There is also an excellent video by Charlie Hunter that includes his whole rundown on the cobra paints and gear he uses, and that part is free online: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ki4Tk9WrMI4.html I do use Geneva paints, and they have many excellent qualities. But not everyone can get to them. In the US is shouldn't be a problem.

@lukedurdin how can we clean these brushes then. Other then turp

​@@saigeeta28dip them in walnut oil to remove most of the paint. Murphy's oil soap as a final cleaning.

@@michelegirard that's a saviour tip.excited to try

I wondered about this! Do you go over this later with water mixable oils or do you use conventional oils over your water-mixable lean layer? If you use conventionals over water mixables, do you worry about water being trapped underneath? Or do you allow your under-layer to dry thoroughly first? Thanks!

@@suzannebonham583 Hi Suzanne! After my first lean layer with water mixable oils thinned with water, I go right into other layers as needed. These other layers are also water mixable oils-I don’t paint with non-water mixable oils, although most of the brands let you mix up to about 30% of regular oil paint to any water mixable oil. More than that, and you tend to lose the ability to use soap and water for clean up. As far as letting it “dry”, the water evaporates pretty quickly, probably a little slower than using a solvent like odorless mineral spirits for regular oils or even the water mixable thinner for wmo’s made by Winsor & Newton. You could definitely use regular oils over the wmo’s, painting alla prima or indirectly in layers, waiting just long enough for the water to evaporate from the first layer. I would probably wait longer (overnight or at least a few hours) if painting on canvas than, say, gessoed hardboard. I would think canvas would retain water longer, so longer drying time. Of course, if you want to avoid solvent altogether, you could also just do your first layer in acrylic. I often do this as well. Hope this helps!

I use water mixable oils in this way. Seems to work fine

@@suzannebonham583 im sure you’ve probably already found answer to your question but in case you haven’t, yes it seems to be fine! Read “the new oil painting method” and it talks about using acrylic as an under painting. You do however need to allow it to dry before going over with oil… I think the conservative estimate is 3 days but I think it depends on your climate. Hope that helps!

@@Sarah-vy7jj A lot of miniature painters I know Lay down the shading with black and white primer using and airbrush from below/above, then stain the miniatures with a brush and transparent acrylic paint (miniature contrast or speedpaints) Then paint over that with oil paint. It sure makes painting miniatures easy. I actually stumbled on this video because my new painting space has near zero ventilation and I'm sick of using acrylics, I figured I had so much oil paint gear in my garage but I was trying to figure out how I could paint with oil paint in my living room with cats (and myself lol) but I'm really apt to use a lot of mineral spirits and liquin when I paint miniatures, I think I just need to figure out a way to vent a small fume hood to paint in. I am going to try thinning the paints with more oil (and using a half dozen paint brushes at a time so i can just clean them outside aftewards) but I dont think the texture will be quite how I like it, and the half day of drying time with liquin getting extended to several days is not preferable. I just don't know.

I have always wondered why no one seems to prefer doing acrylic under paintings for oil paintings. Is there any downside?

Acrylic is also toxic.

I've ended up resorting to acrylic for the stain because his stuff on Geneva has been sold out now for quite a while.

@J.Shelby yes. Isn't a gessoed white canvas a type of acrylic?

@@jackmaxwell3134 No, they are not toxic.

@J.Shelby Sooner or later someone has a reason why everything one does creates cracks. Tons of top professional painters use acrylic paint under oil. In fact most gesso is acrylic, and there are people who will tell you that it isn't good either. All that may be true, but I can tell you something else that isn't good, 99.9% of the paintings people do. Use reasonable materials and paint lots of paintings.

@@HondoTrailside water color underpainting solves this problem as well

​@@J.S.temporarypainting acrylic over oils causes cracks, not the other way around.

Can you explain what you mean with the block in primers and then underpainting with complementary colours? Do you mean a coloured gesso and that the shadows are done on top? Sorry! :)

@@starvictory7079 Micheal Harding (before we start, I'm NOT affiliated with him and don't want people to write off Geneva paints or Mark's system just because *I* have an opinion) does a range of pigmented, acrylic-based primers that allow you to tone the canvas with colour. A common trick for portrait painters is to tone a canvas with an earthy green, which in turn allows for the fleshy tones (especially in the cheeks and lips, think alizarin crimson) to play up and dance with the greens underneath. (That's what I mean when I say complementary.) That's really what it boils down to. I tend to block in with the opposite (complementary) colour. So if I'm painting an orange, I'll block it in with blue. Or if I'm painting a lemon, I'll block it in with purple. I'm not really a believer in generic, burnt umber washes. NOT that they don't work. I just like to approach by a case by case basis.

@@mrsnrub9780 Thank you. So like a verdaccio technique. I like the block in idea with complementary colours. Tack så mycket! Greetings from Sweden

@@starvictory7079 Precisely. I actually block-in/underpaint in multiple colours, particularly in still-life work when things can become complicated. Not only do I have nice complementary/reflex tones to play with, I also have a natural colour coding system. Neutral stains work well for me when I'm painting tonal landscapes. When I have a street scene on my hands, I do my preliminary drawings in terre verte (low tint power, which means it's easy to wipe off if I mess up.) Basically, the more tools in your bag, the better. Maybe not when you're in the very early stages of learning, but when you're competent - which I suspect that you are, it's time to fly solo and figure what works for YOU. That's ultimately how artists are created.

@@starvictory7079 Oh, and greetings from London!

I've used it too as well in the past, for both paintings and under paintings and as a brush cleaner. However, the general consensus on Wet Canvas it seems is that it is not trustworthy in the painting. The questionable issue I guess being drying time. Although in my expereince it dries fine on canvas, some were saying it is an issue that it does not evaporate on a surface like glass for long periods. A couple of other recommended methods I've heard online from a couple artists are to just use pure oil paint rubbed out onto the canvas/ a very thin layer for the underlayer. Or chalk and linseed oil. The downside to I think would be that straight paint without solvent takes longer to dry. In Tad Spurgeon's the Living Craft he has a chart of the safest underpainting/ layering systems under the section Fat Over Lean. He took his site down but another artist has it up for free download on their site. Per his book : Safest system: " Thin water-based or lean tempera on a slightly absorbent ground" then a middle layer of "thin tempera grassa, or thin oil paint rubbed out or used with chalk and solvent " and a final layer of "oil paint with minimal added thickness and minimal saturating and sequestering medium" A second safe system listed as : An underlayer of "thin oil paint on a slightly absorbent ground rubbed out or used with a little solvent and chalk, and then a middle layer of " Straight oil paint with any extra thickness removed with a knife or rag ," with a final layer of "oil paint with minimal added thickness and minimal added saturating and sequestering medium." The chart also lists unsafe examples. It sounds like those are not necessarily wet into wet, but I imagine they could still work as under-layers.

Turpentine is the best smell. All the "safe" stuff smells bad.

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Read Dr Daniel G Amen's "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life" book all about brain health. Specifically the parts where he talks about solvents

@J.Shelby it's used since centuries

@J.Shelby walnut oil is not tested long term, it seems it has cracking problems poppy seed oil is not even studied, every oil has his disadvantages but we pretty much know what are the problems of flaxseed oil and even if it tends to yellow it gets its tone pretty soon and it keeps his stability for centuries, we still don't know what will happen to other modern oils, you can check on rublev's channel they have a lot of info on this topic (and they only use linseed oil IRC)

@J.Shelby Another example of making up problems. Anyway most artist should focus more on whether their paitings will leave a toxic residue when they are burned.

@J.Shelby Traditional techniques were not always toxic as far as the oils used. Pigments were a horror show. But it was science that messed everything up in order to create products that dried really fast, and other goals. One of the routes to low toxic high durability paintings is to follow old methods. This is a new trend with several people offering seminars. Here is Kitts' teaser video, on old solvent free techniques: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ka6sTS94xns.html

I prefer walnut oil as a painting medium.

check the ingredients and safety warnings on your gamsol. It is a toxic substance and even though its odorless it still evaporates toxic fumes that you could potentially inhale.

Gamsol just smells better, it is not guaranteed safe.

Use baby oil

If it isn't nasty it is probably OK. Bigger problem is if it has vitamin e added (which artist grade will not). Anti Oxidants like E stop drying. Sometimes people who travel end up buying locally available stuff.

@@HondoTrailside Good to know. Thank you.

I considered this at some point when I first started, and I didn't try it for various reasons : 1. it is quite expensive, 2. people were commenting they got sick of the smell of lavender which is very strong, 3. Mark Carder explains in a video that you don't need any solvents to paint. So I started to paint only with oil. Even on large canvas pure paint is fine. other than paint, I use safflower oil, and stand oil. I don't need to speed up drying time. If I didn't have headaches using odorless mineral spirits, I would probably use it sometimes, to help spread paint on large area or getting a different visual effect, but I don't miss it at all, once I ve learned to paint without. The versatility of oil paint is the only thing I need : adding layers over dry paint, or blending with fresh paint. using the thickness of stand oil, or diluting with a bit of safflower oil to decrease the concentration of pigments. using a lot of paint, or just add a touch ... etc

Far too expensive though that is not a problem for some. The guy you want to look into for that product is Marc Dalassio. He has a YT channel and he has good reasons for using his LSO medium.

Lavender Spike Oil had the same problematic compounds in it a Turpentine and other solvents healthwise. I bought some from Chelsea Studio and it is really, really strong even in open air. It's not real pure Lavender Spike Oil but synthesized version.

As with oil and mineral spirits, acrylics lose their integrity as you thin them down with water. It is always best to use washes at recommended ratios, and if you are using acrylic, why thin it down at all? If you need it to retain a good adhesion for the oil above, use some pumice or other such flattening agent to roughen the paint surface so as to retain porous nature for paint adhesion.

Neither do oils.

Do you know the ingredients of acrylic? Toxic ingredients such as cobalt, manganese, cadmium, chromium, and lead. Since they are into a medium (water based), evidently they DO give off in the fumes.

@@jackmaxwell3134 Not toxic in the EU. Buy cadmium hue etc.

@@nathanielovaughn2145 They do when they're thinned down with solvents, which is the whole point.

Knife has its problems, it can never be gentle as a brush. Good luck getting something soft

Your local recycling/refuse processing centre should be able to accept these kinds of toxic substances. But you might need to throw away less that you think. You can store solvent in a brush cleaner or sealed jar and reuse it between sessions. Once it gets a bit dirty, let it sit in its container for a few days and you should find that all of the solvent settles on the bottom. Pour the clean solvent off the top into a second container and it's ready for reuse. The dirty pigment is left at the bottom of the first container and you can clean this up with a rag and leave the rag outdoors for the solvent to evaporate, leaving only the pigment behind. If you follow this procedure then you should find that there's very little solvent to recycle because it either evaporated or is used up in your painting process. As Mark said in the video, *most* oil paints are non-toxic and don't require special recycling measures. But you should be aware of any toxic pigments you use (e.g., cadmiums) and arrange for them to be recycled.

@@UbiquitousBooks I agree, though, they say that none of (most?) of the cadmiums used in paints today are toxic either. Brushes don't need to be cleaned, there are many ways to achieve this. Mark has videos.

I can't imagine putting turpentine in a sink. But I don't use it. My left over acrylic goes on newspaper or poured into a tall plastic container where it evaporates in my garage. I'm hoping not to have much waste from my new water mixable oils. Most cities have hazardous waste once/year for paint, batteries, light bulbs, etc.

pour into a container of sand kept for this purpose. An art school should NOT be allowing students to tip chemicals down the sink!

He paints alla prima, Geneva paints are very slow drying.

There is nothing toxic about wiping a brush with a towel.

Beat the devil out of it...

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