When I first started painting in earnest, about five years ago, I used acrylics. They were great in the sense that you didn’t have to deal with turpentine or Turpenoid (the synthetic stuff) and cleanup was done with water. No harsh chemicals to deal with! However, since acrylics are water based and dry so fast they left me with little time to correct my beginner’s mistakes and prevented me from playing around with the paint before it dried. Of course later on I learned tricks about using gesso with your paints, and extender medium to prolong the fluidity of acrylics and so on but I found oils to be my favorite medium because I really didn’t need to deal with these additives. Oils really freed me to play around until I “got” it right. It is so much more forgiving of my mistakes, which are many!!
The problem with oils now, though are that even though I work out of a well ventilated home studio, I seem to have more frequent colds and upper respiratory issues which might be related to my sensitivity of the chemicals used in the paints and turp. So…I’ve bought these Winsor and Newton Artisan Water Mixable Oils and I’ll see how they work out.
If you paint, have you ever used these?
UPDATE: I've painted this using my new water-based oils and so far, they're great! No smells whatsoever and they react like regular oils--love 'em!!!
2 comments:
I used to paint with oils, but didn't like the clean-up process. Then I moved to acrylic and watercolor. I may have to try these water based oils. Do you just use soap and water for clean-up?
Hi Gayle,
Yes, you cleanup with soap and water, there is also no smell! So far, I'm very pleased with them. Thanks for your comment!
Post a Comment