Hello and welcome back to my studio.
In this video, I'm talking about water
mixable oil paints and specifically what mediums should you use?
If you're going to use these paints, are they really meant to be used with water?
What's the best practice?
I'm going to share some of my discoveries
with water mixable oils and share that with you, and maybe it'll help help
you make some decisions about how you handle water mixable oils.
Let's have a look.
Okay, so water mixable oils have been around for quite a long time now.
And I remember when they first came out, I thought this was really a great thing.
It meant no solvents.
I could do away with solvents.
I could have a solvent free studio, and that's what a lot of us want.
Should you use water as a medium if you're using water mixable oils?
Well, let's have a look at that and I'll give you my thoughts as we go.
Now, I'm using georgian water mixable
oils, and they're a good student grade paint.
I have tested them out before,
and you can see that in the link at the end of this video.
Pretty much my standard colors.
But it's a challenge between water versus linseed oil as the mediums.
So there's some water in the jar, and I'm going to use refined linseed oil.
Now, starting off with water,
I'm just adding two drops of water to some cerulean blue.
Mixing that up, and you can immediately see how it loosens that paint up.
Very, very dramatic change to the consistency of the paint.
The color looks fairly much the same, but it's much thinner.
And as I mix it, you can see, well, how watery it seems.
It even seems to want to drip off the... There we go.
It drips off the painting knife.
And that's not what I'm looking for as an impressionist painter.
Now, let's try linseed oil.
Two drops of linseed oil.
I'm very careful about how much linseed
oil I add to the paint so it doesn't get too slippery.
Mix that up.
It's looking nice and shiny, looking like what you'd expect from an oil paint.
And it's holding its shape.
You can see quite thick off the painting knife.
Holding its shape on the painting knife, which would be good for impasto.
It doesn't want to drip off.
And this is the important thing.
Now let's have a look at texture.
This is no medium at all.
And the texture is nice and thick as you'd expect.
Now, the linseed oil holding its shape.
I'll just mark these so it's a bit clearer.
And now the texture with water,
once again, looking quite soft and almost runny.
But let's see how it looks off the brush.
Not too bad.
Although it does feel quite thin off the brush.
Let's try mixing a bit of color using the pale yellow and some cerulean blue.
Starting off with the linseed oil,
mixing that in, get it spread nicely into the paint.
And then next, I'm adding water.
You can see how that loosens up.
And we're getting that nice, loose sort of consistency to the paint.
Now, adding cerulean blue to the linseed
oil mix, and getting a fairly dark green, nice shape to it.
Doing the same thing now, where I've used water as the medium,
and I'm immediately noticing a slight change in color.
It almost looks as if it's lighter.
I don't know if you notice that yourself.
This is the oil, linseed oil in the paint.
And this is the water.
It definitely looks slightly lighter, doesn't it?
I've tried this mix again, and I had the same result.
So for me, it's linseed oil as the medium.
But try for yourself and make your own decision.
Well, I hope that gave you something to consider.
You can obviously use any mediums you want, whatever you feel comfortable with.
For me, I just like to save money.
And I don't like to mess with the pigment concentration or saturation of the paint,
unless I'm mixing a specific color into another to get some sort of neutral
or some sort of colorful gray, anything like that.
But mediums?
Pretty much don't use them.
And when I do, it's linseed oil.
And I'm very careful with the amount
of drops I put in, because I don't want my paint to get slippery with too much oil.
And for the most part,
if you get good paints, you don't even need to add mediums.
And why waste money on that when you can use that on some nice brushes?
A good bristle brush will do a lot more
for your painting than some sort of expensive proprietary medium.
Those are just my thoughts on the topic.
And don't forget, I've got a free course for you up here.
There's a link here or in the description,
and you can try out a free painting course.
If this video gave you something
to consider, a few useful tips, please give it a like.
If you can share it, that would be fantastic as well.
And don't forget, subscribe to the channel.
There are more videos always coming along
and posts as well, so you don't want to miss those.
Subscribe now and we'll be chatting again soon in the next video.
Until then, cheers for now.