Nice tip with the Griffins. Unfortunately I just bought my first set of oil primaries in W&N’s Winton line (well, & a yellow from Gamblin’s 1980 line), but maybe I’ll try them in the future. I’m coming from acrylics & watercolors, & personally I love both in their own right… Acrylic’s texture/lack of flow bugged me at first, but I came to realize that a lot of the problem was just figuring out the right mediums/gels to use at the right times, the right grounds/primers to use on surfaces, the right brushes to use for various tasks, the right type of acrylics to use for whatever use-case… For example, fluid acrylics, especially with a touch of water, with a soft moppy brush, on an absorbent surface like light molding paste or absorbent ground, will give you a much more washy, more even layer (more like a very pigmented, non-reactivateable watercolor wash) than using a heavy-bodied acrylic straight from the tube with a very stiff brush; if someone wants a very even, smooth application & they go at it with heavy bodied acrylics & a rigid, stuff brush, & especially on a very hard, smooth surface, they’re going to end up with streaky brushstrokes everywhere & hate the feel & have a bad time. On the other hand, if you want thick impasto application that leaves visible brushstrokes, that may be a perfectly good way to paint (though I’d definitely prime the surface with gesso for tooth- if you paint directly onto hardboard or hard molding paste or a layer of gloss medium, or another hard, smooth surface, you may have adhesion problems, not have the paint flow from the brush properly… The first acrylic brushes I bought also were terrible & inadequate unless you watered the paint down a lot or used a liquidy acrylic medium, which is also a great tool if you want a smoother flow/stroke without diluting it to a watery consistency & risking breaking up the binder. Also, it took time & study to learn how to properly load a brush & stuff like that, which also contribute to these problems (early on I basically couldn’t get a single stroke to extend more than a couple inches- it was very frustrating & annoying. Basically, the disadvantage with acrylic starting out, IMO, is the same as it’s biggest advantage: it’s extremely versatile. You can change the consistency to near whatever you want with a whole range of additives & mediums & different consistencies of paint to begin with (from high flow acrylics which are basically the consistency of ink, to fluid acrylics to soft body to heavy body, plus pouring mediums & super-heavy gels & molding pastes & pumice gels & crackle pastes & so on). & so you can alter it to suit a huuuge spectrum of techniques & applications. I use it for pouring, scraping/squeegee/scraper stuff (a la Gerhard Richter’s abstract series oil paintings)… It’s great to use with sponges, with brushes… You can use glazing mediums for very oil-like glazes. You can even use slow-drying medium/gels to use it in more oil-like capacities (& if they’re a glossy & slow-dry they can even dry with a very oil-like sheen- great stuff for scraper/squeegee method). On the downside, it can get expensive to stay stocked up on the materials you use, & at first it’s daunting to learn about so many options & narrow down to what you need. & if you start out trying to learn with JUST some heavy bodied paints & beginner’s brushes, I can easily see how it would be a bad time (especially if you don’t even realize that you can improve the flow by just dipping the brush in water, dabbing it off, getting it damp before loading it, & other tips like that which seem obvious & basic in retrospect, but starting out you might have no idea are necessary depending on the specific materials you’re working with). But at the same time, (a) you don’t NEED to buy every medium on the market- a couple of basic options like some fluid matte or gel medium (depending on what kind of finish you’re aiming for, what you have in mind to use it for), glazing medium, or fluid acrylics rather than heavy bodied (again, depending on exactly what kind of art you’re trying to do & what will contribute to making it easier, which is research & consideration I’d encourage anyone who’s thinking of trying acrylics to do before investing in any of these materials)… Trying to use the wrong kind of paint straight from the tube, with the wrong kind of brush, on the wrong surface/ground would be like trying to start oil painting without any mediums or solvents, just working with paint straight from the tube, & on a surface with extreme oil penetration- “fat over lean rule? What’s that?” If you don’t learn enough to avoid these kinds of basic mistakes before trying, you can easily have an experience that will turn you off to a medium, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the medium is bad, or even that you couldn’t like it under the right conditions, with more suitable materials for your purposes. Not to speak for you- maybe you knew all of this & just didn’t like the feel regardless of medium/gel/etc.. But for anyone who it may apply to, I thought I’d put it out there. Anyway, one of the main reasons I chose acrylics over oils is because I assumed (or perhaps was exposed to misinfo that suggested) they’d be less toxic- in retrospect I can see that was false. Apparently, aside from the fumes (which you can manage/minimize in various ways, including what you mentioned here), oil paints themselves are quite safe, just being pigment suspended in oil (obviously don’t eat it, & minimize exposure to toxic pigments through the skin, but they aren’t inherently dangerous if used responsibly). While it’s true that you can also minimize the toxicity of acrylics (in this way they’re pretty comparable), the fact that acrylics use plastics, petroleum byproducts, as a binder, means that they are themselves fairly toxic; it doesn’t get emphasized enough, because there’s no smell, but they actually out-gas fumes as they dry too, & you really shouldn’t be using them in your room, letting them dry in there with you (once dry they’re inert, but still)… Which is unfortunate, because I, like many others, specifically gravitated towards using them BECAUSE I thought I could use them in my room without having to make a big to-do of opening windows for ventilation & such. Glad I at least realized what I was exposing myself to after a year or two of painting with them in a fairly enclosed space. Now, however, the obstacle to me switching to oils is on the other side of things. I’ve never minded the quick dry times of acrylics- but what I didn’t realize is the extent to which they enable me to paint at all in such a small space, without a proper studio… Finding a place in my home to properly store oil paintings for a dry time that may range from 8 hours on the “quick” side to days & days… WITHOUT any kind of dust or cat hair or debris finding it’s way into them over such a long period… And I’ve read you don’t want them to be stored to dry in the dark, & you need good air flow… So I’m going to have to really give it some thought & maybe construct an elevated rack, or shelving off a wall, to find a place where I can dry them if I’m going to even try to get started learning the basics. So that has made me appreciate it all the more, that I can basically finish a layer of an acrylic painting & already have it mostly dry & ready for me to work on the next layer. The closest thing to accommodating oil painting dry times I’ve done would be drying/curing my acrylic pours. When you are mixing large quantities of floetrol & pouring medium into acrylic paint, applying it in hefty poured layers, it can similarly take days to fully dry (I once ruined one because even 2 days into drying, it looked dry, & no longer moved I’d you tilted it, but it turned out the surface was still pliable). And pours have the added difficulty of needing a VERY level surface (especially if they’re very fluid in consistency). A tilt of a few degrees, & over 8-16+ hours the design you make can run right off the canvas. So I built a very basic leveling table out of some hardware from Home Depot & a sheet of wood. Does the trick! But it can still be hard to tuck it away somewhere safe & clean where it will avoid any kind of contamination for many hours at a time, & if there will be any solvent smell or anything like that then I won’t be able to use the spaces I’ve used for acrylic pours (though now I’m thinking I shouldn’t let those dry in here either, which is tough)… I don’t know; it’s seeming nicer & nicer that watercolors have no fumes, little to no toxicity (unless you drink some cadmium water or smear cobalt all over your hands or something), no need for a big dedicated space for drying, unless you’re working on massive sheets of paper… I WISH I liked gouache nearly as much as acrylics, or as I’m sure I’ll like oils too, because it’s way more convenient, but it lacks all the versatility & still seems so flat & lifeless, extremely difficult for me to use as effectively as acrylics OR watercolors- maybe if I mastered it I’d like it more, but it seems like no replacement for these other mediums. The quick-drying oils & quicker drying mediums may make it more doable in the space I have, but I may have to hold off on oil experimentation until I have a real studio space.
@@k6fgj Glad I found your channel. I have been slowly buying alkyd oils. From what I researched at least where I can get my supplies, They are Artist grade oils and as cheap as student grade oils. If I am wrong on this let me know. I like that you use a limited pallette. I had been wanting to add Dioxazine Purple to mine as from what I read is almost impossible to mix from scratch. Unfortunately in my area all the stores have been on back order for months and no date in site for a restocking. I found your channel trying to find if using a Gambling Alkyd with my Griffin alkyds would be ok? Have you mixed different Alkyds without issues? One person said that something bad could occur mixing Galkyd which is in gamblin paints with Griffin paints and liquin. Hope you have the answer. Great videos I have subscribed and will follow your videos.
Artisan are water mixable oils, a bit faster dry time than regular oils and solvent-free work process. Alkyd are just an emulsified variant that dry faster than regular oils and use alkyd mediums.
Try distilled turpentine, does the same job, almost no odour. You only really smell it if you put your nose up to it & it doesn't have the same smell you'd expect.
Thank you for sharing ❤
Thanks, Ian. I love Griffin Alkyds, too!
Nice tip with the Griffins. Unfortunately I just bought my first set of oil primaries in W&N’s Winton line (well, & a yellow from Gamblin’s 1980 line), but maybe I’ll try them in the future.
I’m coming from acrylics & watercolors, & personally I love both in their own right… Acrylic’s texture/lack of flow bugged me at first, but I came to realize that a lot of the problem was just figuring out the right mediums/gels to use at the right times, the right grounds/primers to use on surfaces, the right brushes to use for various tasks, the right type of acrylics to use for whatever use-case… For example, fluid acrylics, especially with a touch of water, with a soft moppy brush, on an absorbent surface like light molding paste or absorbent ground, will give you a much more washy, more even layer (more like a very pigmented, non-reactivateable watercolor wash) than using a heavy-bodied acrylic straight from the tube with a very stiff brush; if someone wants a very even, smooth application & they go at it with heavy bodied acrylics & a rigid, stuff brush, & especially on a very hard, smooth surface, they’re going to end up with streaky brushstrokes everywhere & hate the feel & have a bad time. On the other hand, if you want thick impasto application that leaves visible brushstrokes, that may be a perfectly good way to paint (though I’d definitely prime the surface with gesso for tooth- if you paint directly onto hardboard or hard molding paste or a layer of gloss medium, or another hard, smooth surface, you may have adhesion problems, not have the paint flow from the brush properly… The first acrylic brushes I bought also were terrible & inadequate unless you watered the paint down a lot or used a liquidy acrylic medium, which is also a great tool if you want a smoother flow/stroke without diluting it to a watery consistency & risking breaking up the binder. Also, it took time & study to learn how to properly load a brush & stuff like that, which also contribute to these problems (early on I basically couldn’t get a single stroke to extend more than a couple inches- it was very frustrating & annoying.
Basically, the disadvantage with acrylic starting out, IMO, is the same as it’s biggest advantage: it’s extremely versatile. You can change the consistency to near whatever you want with a whole range of additives & mediums & different consistencies of paint to begin with (from high flow acrylics which are basically the consistency of ink, to fluid acrylics to soft body to heavy body, plus pouring mediums & super-heavy gels & molding pastes & pumice gels & crackle pastes & so on). & so you can alter it to suit a huuuge spectrum of techniques & applications. I use it for pouring, scraping/squeegee/scraper stuff (a la Gerhard Richter’s abstract series oil paintings)… It’s great to use with sponges, with brushes… You can use glazing mediums for very oil-like glazes. You can even use slow-drying medium/gels to use it in more oil-like capacities (& if they’re a glossy & slow-dry they can even dry with a very oil-like sheen- great stuff for scraper/squeegee method). On the downside, it can get expensive to stay stocked up on the materials you use, & at first it’s daunting to learn about so many options & narrow down to what you need. & if you start out trying to learn with JUST some heavy bodied paints & beginner’s brushes, I can easily see how it would be a bad time (especially if you don’t even realize that you can improve the flow by just dipping the brush in water, dabbing it off, getting it damp before loading it, & other tips like that which seem obvious & basic in retrospect, but starting out you might have no idea are necessary depending on the specific materials you’re working with). But at the same time, (a) you don’t NEED to buy every medium on the market- a couple of basic options like some fluid matte or gel medium (depending on what kind of finish you’re aiming for, what you have in mind to use it for), glazing medium, or fluid acrylics rather than heavy bodied (again, depending on exactly what kind of art you’re trying to do & what will contribute to making it easier, which is research & consideration I’d encourage anyone who’s thinking of trying acrylics to do before investing in any of these materials)… Trying to use the wrong kind of paint straight from the tube, with the wrong kind of brush, on the wrong surface/ground would be like trying to start oil painting without any mediums or solvents, just working with paint straight from the tube, & on a surface with extreme oil penetration- “fat over lean rule? What’s that?” If you don’t learn enough to avoid these kinds of basic mistakes before trying, you can easily have an experience that will turn you off to a medium, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the medium is bad, or even that you couldn’t like it under the right conditions, with more suitable materials for your purposes. Not to speak for you- maybe you knew all of this & just didn’t like the feel regardless of medium/gel/etc.. But for anyone who it may apply to, I thought I’d put it out there.
Anyway, one of the main reasons I chose acrylics over oils is because I assumed (or perhaps was exposed to misinfo that suggested) they’d be less toxic- in retrospect I can see that was false. Apparently, aside from the fumes (which you can manage/minimize in various ways, including what you mentioned here), oil paints themselves are quite safe, just being pigment suspended in oil (obviously don’t eat it, & minimize exposure to toxic pigments through the skin, but they aren’t inherently dangerous if used responsibly). While it’s true that you can also minimize the toxicity of acrylics (in this way they’re pretty comparable), the fact that acrylics use plastics, petroleum byproducts, as a binder, means that they are themselves fairly toxic; it doesn’t get emphasized enough, because there’s no smell, but they actually out-gas fumes as they dry too, & you really shouldn’t be using them in your room, letting them dry in there with you (once dry they’re inert, but still)… Which is unfortunate, because I, like many others, specifically gravitated towards using them BECAUSE I thought I could use them in my room without having to make a big to-do of opening windows for ventilation & such. Glad I at least realized what I was exposing myself to after a year or two of painting with them in a fairly enclosed space.
Now, however, the obstacle to me switching to oils is on the other side of things. I’ve never minded the quick dry times of acrylics- but what I didn’t realize is the extent to which they enable me to paint at all in such a small space, without a proper studio… Finding a place in my home to properly store oil paintings for a dry time that may range from 8 hours on the “quick” side to days & days… WITHOUT any kind of dust or cat hair or debris finding it’s way into them over such a long period… And I’ve read you don’t want them to be stored to dry in the dark, & you need good air flow… So I’m going to have to really give it some thought & maybe construct an elevated rack, or shelving off a wall, to find a place where I can dry them if I’m going to even try to get started learning the basics. So that has made me appreciate it all the more, that I can basically finish a layer of an acrylic painting & already have it mostly dry & ready for me to work on the next layer. The closest thing to accommodating oil painting dry times I’ve done would be drying/curing my acrylic pours. When you are mixing large quantities of floetrol & pouring medium into acrylic paint, applying it in hefty poured layers, it can similarly take days to fully dry (I once ruined one because even 2 days into drying, it looked dry, & no longer moved I’d you tilted it, but it turned out the surface was still pliable). And pours have the added difficulty of needing a VERY level surface (especially if they’re very fluid in consistency). A tilt of a few degrees, & over 8-16+ hours the design you make can run right off the canvas. So I built a very basic leveling table out of some hardware from Home Depot & a sheet of wood. Does the trick! But it can still be hard to tuck it away somewhere safe & clean where it will avoid any kind of contamination for many hours at a time, & if there will be any solvent smell or anything like that then I won’t be able to use the spaces I’ve used for acrylic pours (though now I’m thinking I shouldn’t let those dry in here either, which is tough)… I don’t know; it’s seeming nicer & nicer that watercolors have no fumes, little to no toxicity (unless you drink some cadmium water or smear cobalt all over your hands or something), no need for a big dedicated space for drying, unless you’re working on massive sheets of paper… I WISH I liked gouache nearly as much as acrylics, or as I’m sure I’ll like oils too, because it’s way more convenient, but it lacks all the versatility & still seems so flat & lifeless, extremely difficult for me to use as effectively as acrylics OR watercolors- maybe if I mastered it I’d like it more, but it seems like no replacement for these other mediums. The quick-drying oils & quicker drying mediums may make it more doable in the space I have, but I may have to hold off on oil experimentation until I have a real studio space.
Have been wondering about oils but wasn’t sure where to start. Thank you for all the tips. Perfect timing!
Charlotte Shipman thank you Charlotte. I will be posting more about it all, over the next few weeks and months. Watch out for NZ. Skies 😉😉😘
@@k6fgj Glad I found your channel. I have been slowly buying alkyd oils. From what I researched at least where I can get my supplies, They are Artist grade oils and as cheap as student grade oils. If I am wrong on this let me know. I like that you use a limited pallette. I had been wanting to add Dioxazine Purple to mine as from what I read is almost impossible to mix from scratch. Unfortunately in my area all the stores have been on back order for months and no date in site for a restocking. I found your channel trying to find if using a Gambling Alkyd with my Griffin alkyds would be ok? Have you mixed different Alkyds without issues? One person said that something bad could occur mixing Galkyd which is in gamblin paints with Griffin paints and liquin. Hope you have the answer. Great videos I have subscribed and will follow your videos.
But can you paint with Alkyd oils in a poorly ventilated room without any danger to your health?
Thanks!
Hi Ian, some good info on alkyd paints! Can you tell me the difference between W&N griffin alkyd and artisan paints? John
Artisan are water mixable oils, a bit faster dry time than regular oils and solvent-free work process. Alkyd are just an emulsified variant that dry faster than regular oils and use alkyd mediums.
I believe it's standard oils with the Alkyd drying agent added at manufacturing
Try distilled turpentine, does the same job, almost no odour. You only really smell it if you put your nose up to it & it doesn't have the same smell you'd expect.
I highly recommend Zestit brush cleaner , made from citrus oils , it smells of Oranges and is much greener than turpentine or white spirit
Griffin's are actually cheaper than standard oils Ian!