Newbie here, purchased the master set and have almost completed the grandeur of summer ? I have found the black and van dyke brown to be very oily, the brown has left a big splodge on my painting which I have now scrapped off, and I have put some of the paint onto cardboard to hopefully lose some of the oil. My question is, is it normal for these two colours to be a lot more oily than the others, or have I got a bad batch?
B.r brand paints oily ..?
Some are inherently more oily than others. I keep a towel handy when I open the tubes to drain the oil out onto.
It seems like they’ve switched suppliers a few times recently. My BR paint tubes say they were manufactured either in the UK or in New York. Originally the paint was made by Weber. I think they switched to the UK company (Daler Rowny), it was oil city, and they switched again to the NY folks, which have been better. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong)
But long story short, yeah it’s a problem. I’m actually mid-switch to a different brand of paint because the BR tubes are a liquid mess. My UK-made tubes of Van Dyke Brown and Phthalo Blue are unusable without first smearing them all over multiple pieces of cardboard.
Where were your tubes made?
Yep, mine are made by daler Rowney.u.k.
- Edited
Let me suggest a possible solution to avoid drying paint on the cardboard. It is totally opposite from what Bob teaches. But it should work well - I use it when i need to block in dark colors.
Sky: Apply liquid white only in the sky area and do what bob instructs to produce nice sky.
Ground.: No liquid white and no liquid clear. Use older bristle brush and dark purple/blue/brown in single color or in mixes with each other. Now what i suggest to do: Add a bit of OPT (odorless paint thinner) to your paint so it is like a hair conditioner in viscosity or drinking yogurt. Use your old bristle brush and scrub it into the ground level very thinly. There will be brush strokes visible - it is alright. Main condition is to do a thin layer - any dark color. now let it dry for 30 min and take that time to think what will be where.
What is going to happen - because diluted paint application is easy and you scrub it in it gives a thin paint layer. OPT will evaporate and leave you a controllable surface to which thicker paint will stick well and will not be badly mixing with upper layers.
Very often beginner painters do not have enough darks in the shadows due to loosing all the darks when mixing in highlights.
This should protect you from that problem.
Overall - Daler Rowney Artistics are just a bit more oily than Winsor and Newton Artisitc paints I have. But in the current technique i am exploring I am intentionally thinning paints down with different mediums. So if you do not plan return you may keep your paints for future artistic grows that surely will follow when you will start exploring different subjects to paint.
Also some paints contains some oil when squished out of the tube. It is not bad. Take a towel as @doggymommee8301 suggested and wipe that puddle of oil from your pallet. You can settle paint tube on the paper towel opened side down so towel touches the paint in the tube and it will pull some of the oil out.
A bit of theory: pigments are mixed with oil and sometimes they adsorb a lot but then as I understood they give it back. Or sometimes they are thirsty and manufacturers may add more oil to bind that pigment.
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