Hey Al! I recently switched from traditional oils to water mixables. I found one major thing that no one seems to discuss, and that is that there are water mixable mediums! Stand oil, linseed oil, thinner, etc. and they make a massive difference in the experience. I also I use Winsor and Newton’s artisan line and the quality is identical to their traditional oils. I have some tubes of Georgian and they’re less pigmented. I only really use water in my paint for super thin layers like my underpainting, and most importantly to wash out my brush between colors! It also really does make cleanup a breeze. I know materials are super expensive but if you ever decide to try them again I’d suggest Winsor and Newton or similar next time. I enjoyed the video as always, I’m glad you gave them a try!
I came here to say that I love my Winsor & Newton water Mixable oils and fully stopped using my traditional oils after getting them for the same reasons (clean-up) and also the fumes being less intense. And I definitely reach for my water Mixable oils every single time I want to paint with oils now and do not ever miss my traditional oils
Makes me so happy to read your comments as just two days ago i purchased that very set of Georgian WM oils + some other colors and mediums. I have a lot of experience painting with traditional oils but sadly i have asthma and i had to give them up several years ago. Been painting a lot with acrylics too and thats a beautiful medium but it lacks the smoothnes and depth of oils and painting portraits is doomed to fail, at least for me😛. Planning to continue working with acrylics and do overpainting with wm oils where needed. Also gonna try and see if my traditional old oilpaints maybe are possible to integrate with the wm mediums somehow🤔🤓
I'm sure you've seen Camille d'Errico's work before - she works in pop surrealism. She's published several books on her works and techniques. She uses primarily water-mixable oils, usually the Holbein Aqua-Duo brand. In her book "Pop Painting", she talks about being one of the only artists she knows that uses water-mixable oils. She mentions a lot of techniques, including mixing them with acrylic paint - something you could never do with traditional oil paint. I really recommend that book in particular.
I only use water-mixables, but I use them with modified thinner and linseed oil from winsor and newton. Highly recommend! I find it no different to regular oils and it's so easy to clean up with just soap and water and also no toxic smells :)
As someone who has been pairing for 20+ years I gotta say I love water mixable oil especially using them with my students. For its the same with all mediums just takes getting used to using them. But I love the ease of cleaning. Also for oils whether traditional or water mixable starting with gesso on your canvas is a major help when it comes to how the paint sits on the canvas
No way! This video could not of come out at a better time! I just started learning oils, and decided to start with water soluble ones for safety reasons, and I’m so excited other people are trying them too!
You mentioned slow-drying acrylics. It would be interesting to compare the two. Maybe a half-and-half situation like you did with the crayons and pastels.
I got the same set a few weeks ago for $10!!! I dud myself a favor and pocked up some mediums that were specifically made for water mixable oils, because I’ve heard that they are hard to work with without additional mediums, and that water just doesn’t do it.
Just tried Cobras this past week - I have decades of oil and acrylic painting experience and am very impressed by the Cobras bring together the best of both worlds and not needing a thinner. I did start using them with a little bit of Cobra medium to get the flow going well.
I love your painting 😍 my first try with water mixable oils was a desaster, I used winsor and newton artisan and didn't liked them at all. Then I saw your video and wanted to give them another go. I buyed the Georgians and now I love them😍 Your painting is amazing
I use traditional oil but there is also a watermixable oil that I tried and liked the brand is called "cobra" it's pretty creamy pretty similar to traditional oil. I used it as underpainting in the past though. Also you can use some mediums (for water mixable oil) to easyly move the paint. But I do recommend that you apply 1 or two coats of gesso before painting since most of those cheap canvas barely put gesso on them. I got a feeling that's what the issue you were having or like you said do the underpainting first, so you can better spread the paint on the canvas.
Windsor and newton water mixable oils were utterly gorgeous when I tried them a few years ago!! Unfortunately I never ended up making anything finished with them because I’m just not much of a painter in general but they were really nice. Now I’m stuck with like 4 tubes of fancy paint and no desire to use them aha
I love water-mixable oils! I use Winsor-Newton Brand and linseed oil as a medium. I don't get to use them as often as I wish I could, since I have VERY limited space and ventilation in my apartment. I still do some small studies fairly often, but until I have storage/drying space, it's really tough to work with them on larger pieces.
Nice one - I have been using them for few years and stumbled across them by chance and just had to go for it….and now I will not bother with the traditional method of oils paints this is awesome it’s brilliant cost same as traditional oil paints and they gave me the same results no one could tell the difference between them just you have to find the right brand that you feel comfortable with Windsor & Newton is same as Daler Rowney also used cobra paint not that much difference then there are others but yet to try them but not in hurry I’m happy with W&N and Daler ….. and Hello to all the artist who use them 😊
Good on you for trying a new medium! I really want to try water-mixable oils, and honestly this looks like it turned out really nice! Just like an oil painting, right? ;) "Easy" cleanup can happen with oils, too - many painters use lots of brushes (no need to clean brushes with Gamsol mid-painting) + use safflower oil as a brush dip to preserve brushes between sessions. You can leave the brushes alone for a week or two that way, especially with the longer-drying oils. Simply wipe well when you want to start painting again, and you're good to go! Also, you *can* use soap (Dawn, Murphy's Oil Soap, Masters Brush Cleaner, etc) to clean your brushes, just like you would when you do your dishes! It just takes longer than if you use OMS. The real problem is OMS is great for thinning paint in the earlier underpainting stages. I've been experimenting with watercolor/gouache as a base layer - I read that it's possible to seal this with a 50/50 Galkyd/Gamsol mix before oil painting to protect the watercolor layer from future varnish, which (although not completely OMS-free) is significantly less time dealing with poisons, and could be done far away from the studio since it's just a single simple layer. I really enjoyed this video, and definitely am subscribing! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on WMO!
I know a lot of professional artists that use Georgian, and the lack of black is pretty standard I think in oils as more traditional painting doesn’t necessarily use black. You mix your darks from the colours in the rest of the painting. and it helps if you view the water mixable part as just for cleaning and use the mediums designed for the product to work with it so that it’s archival. There is a question on how archival preliminary washes would be with water as the medium. The main draw for water soluble is being able to avoid toxic ingredients such as cadmium and the use of thinners, but as someone else has said you might get better results if you gesso the canvas first. They are the holy grail for people with allergies and sensitivities to thinners.
Try Holbein Duo Aqua or Cobra. They are water soluble that are more buttery and closer to standard oil. Holbein are my favorite and are heavy on pigment.
It sounds like this is the type of medium to be used as a finisher. So use acrylic to lay down initial washes of color and then use the water soluble oils as detailer
As an oil painter in former life (before I got sick), I have to say that I don't really get water mixable oils... My technique always was to never use solvents and clean up without solvents so when I 'switched' to w/s oils, my only reason was trying if I could handle the smell. What I found out, was that w/s oils almost require you to use a medium when painting or they just... Idk, granulate? It's this weird separation feeling, especially if you add any water. And I think they take less water than regular oils take turps/solvent to 'break down'. So you have to be a lot more precise with how wet your brush is, how much solvent (water) in your mixes etc. I don't find Georgian oils vs. w/s oils to have that much of a difference, they are both fairly 'thin' paints. For some things that's great, but others it is annoying and you'll feel like you're using a lot. Same with W&N: I find both lines to be a lot thicker. So, what did I learn? That I really don't care for w/s oils. They do the job alright, but for me it takes me more to work with them than with good quality traditional oils. Are they a bad medium? No, but again, for me w/s oils feels like a more involved medium to get something good out of them, compared to traditional oils. And here's the big thing: all paints require ventilation and safety precautions. Just because you might not smell something, it doesn't mean it's not harmful! People seem to think that especially acrylics are a safe, non-toxic alternative to oils. NOT SO. Acrylics can emit fumes just like any other paint, even more so than neat oil paints, as it's plastic curing. Good quality, modern paints are always safer but not without harmful aspects. If you have a neat oil paint (pigment + pure oil) and don't use any solvents, that's as non-toxic as you can get. Just don't pick the toxic pigments. 😜
Whenever I use regular oils I enjoy the process and end up with something decent. Whenever I use water soluble oils, since I have them I want to use them, I always fight with them, can't make details because they are too thin and just disappear or make a gloop, they get super tacky when drying which makes new layers of paint apply weird on top of the tacky paint, and I don't use solvents with regular oils anyway so I don't get to specially enjoy the feature that makes them unique I hate the misconception about toxicity oils have too. I never see people complain about cadmiums in water colors or acrylics but when it comes to oils people treat them like the devil.
It's also transitioning to water based oils (Cobra brand), because acrylics by Golden (called Open) became super expensive. So now they expect us to pay $12 for just 2oz tube, and it becomes really hard to build a sizable collection. I have a giant collection of oil paints (spanning over 10 yrs now), so I'm very much used to slow-drying mediums. But Golden expects us artists to be billionaires in the making 😂
That range was discontinued by Royal Talens because it was not up to their standards, and they then reworked their water solubles line in order to provide better performance and released it as their Cobra brand line of water soluble oil paints. So, you may want to check those out!
what a coincidence, i just got a massive 5 dollar deal on 6 watermixable oil tubes! good to know the gods have decided that water mixable oils shall be spread to the masses in the form of deals lol
Isn't a concern that they might not necessarily be as archival as regular oil, like there hasn't been enough time to test that, and often adding ingredients to oil can mess that up?
thanks for this video, i was curious about this medium since i'm very allergic to all the fumes surrounding traditional oil paints. i guess if they still smell of oil, even a little, i should avoid them. too bad...
you did get some nice blending with them🙂 lol submission for the county fair, know exactly what you mean 🙃🙂 I keep meaning to buy a set of these to try since I cant use actual oil paints due to all of the extra chemicals you come in contact with when using oils. def would still use them outside tho (if it ever tops raining lol)
From watching the whole video, and listening to the whole voiceover, as another non-expert, I think you drew unfairly generalized conclusions based on painting a rushed picture on a dry, ungesso-ed canvas, and having trouble moving the paint. That said, the painting itself seemed to come out really well, especially considering how much you were stressing over it. It's probably worth taking the health considerations more seriously, given the risks associated with long-term exposure to traditional solvents.
I feel like water mixables would be good for school art programs?? (and I say this as someone who has never used oils or water mixables...) My school's art room is already packed as it is, so I feel like it sounds like a good way to test if you like oils without taking up extra space with solvents. Also i know so many younger art students sometimes don't realize the cost of the supplies they use, so they end up being more wasteful and so I feel like this is a less costly option??
I use wate rmixable oils because, even though I love the way oils feel, I just can't handle the smell. I've even tried using odourless mineral spirits and painting outside, but it was just too disgusting. Odourless, my bottom! There are mediums designed for use with water mixable oils which really help and are worth looking at, and do the same jobs as those for ordinary oils. Water mixable oils did simmer in popularity for quite a while, but they're on the up. I use Cobra or Artisan, but even Daniel Smith and Holbein have recently brought out ranges. They're slightly more expensive than ordinary oils because of the extra processes involved to make them, but it's worth it not to want to vomit at the smell.
Regular oils and watermixable oils to me smell the same. Watermixable smell a tad sweeter but that's it. I don't use solvents because they make me lightheaded
I personally don't like water mixable oils. I have both water mixable and traditional and every time I use the water mixable ones, I struggle a lot. Using traditional and water mixable is like day and night. They don't get as pigmented, they get extremely tacky and stay that way for a while compared to traditional, and I don't use solvents with my traditional so my only advantage would be saving a couple of minutes washing them. I have cobra, which I think they are too thin for my liking, and artisan, which are okay.
I understand why you don’t like doing too much research because you don’t want to be too influenced by other people before experimenting with a new medium, but don’t shut yourself off completely from doing so! it can provide you with some guidance for issues that most people will run into so you can avoid some of that frustration. then people who see your video can also find out how to avoid those frustrations. then you save yourself some grief and have more time to enjoy the process and really explore the medium!
PSA: All paints are toxic if they use toxic pigments. They're harmful when ingested, or if they get soaked into someone's skin. When paint dries, the vapors from the water, oil, alcohol, and/or plastic emit fumes, even if you can't smell it. I say this because there's a huge misconseption about oil paints being dangerous to paint with. If you want to try oil paint, you can opt for "non-toxic" solutions such as mediums and oils that don't have toxic chemicals in them. That way when you clean your brushes and mix mediums in with your paint, it's not emitting the same levels of toxicity. Unless you use toxic pigments.. Nothing fixes that except buying the non-toxic synthetic version of those specific pigments. Water mixable oil paints are still oil paint. The formula they use to make the paints is different than traditional oils, obviously, and for this reason not a lot of artists use water mixable oils. Why? Because even the companies that make them admit that they don't know the lightfast and long term quality of the paints. Water and oil don't mix, yet they've found a way to make them "mix". So no one knows what will happen to the paintings in the long term. In 50-100 years the paintings could fade, crack, or chip away. So a lot of artists just don't know how trust worthy the paints are long term. And again, there are ways to use traditional oil paint without using harmful solvents or pigments (from what we know). Regardless, even when using watercolour or acrylic paints, you should work in a well ventilated room and not be directly inhaling the fumes from ANY paint if it's something you're worried about. Another thing to note; even synthetic pigments could have toxic properties. They are made in labs using specific compounds, chemicals, and methods such as extreme heat to achieve the pigment. Just because no one has had reactions to the synthetic pigments yet, it doesn't mean they never will. Not to mention the people making those pigments have to take extreme caution just to bring them about. Everything in life is subject to change and learning new things about them. Lead and aspestos weren't concidered toxic until years after use when they linked serious health conditions and death to those specific things. No one can say 100% something is safe or non-toxic because sometimes symtoms aren't linked to the source until many many years later, the reason being that we experience and expose ourselves to new and different things every single day, so there are many factors to take into consideration when trying to claim something as safe or non-toxic. Similarly to how one can be allergic to specific foods, aromas, or plants while another person isn't. The same can be said for pigments and other paint properties.
Hey Al! I recently switched from traditional oils to water mixables. I found one major thing that no one seems to discuss, and that is that there are water mixable mediums! Stand oil, linseed oil, thinner, etc. and they make a massive difference in the experience. I also I use Winsor and Newton’s artisan line and the quality is identical to their traditional oils. I have some tubes of Georgian and they’re less pigmented. I only really use water in my paint for super thin layers like my underpainting, and most importantly to wash out my brush between colors! It also really does make cleanup a breeze. I know materials are super expensive but if you ever decide to try them again I’d suggest Winsor and Newton or similar next time. I enjoyed the video as always, I’m glad you gave them a try!
I came here to say that I love my Winsor & Newton water Mixable oils and fully stopped using my traditional oils after getting them for the same reasons (clean-up) and also the fumes being less intense. And I definitely reach for my water Mixable oils every single time I want to paint with oils now and do not ever miss my traditional oils
Makes me so happy to read your comments as just two days ago i purchased that very set of Georgian WM oils + some other colors and mediums. I have a lot of experience painting with traditional oils but sadly i have asthma and i had to give them up several years ago. Been painting a lot with acrylics too and thats a beautiful medium but it lacks the smoothnes and depth of oils and painting portraits is doomed to fail, at least for me😛. Planning to continue working with acrylics and do overpainting with wm oils where needed. Also gonna try and see if my traditional old oilpaints maybe are possible to integrate with the wm mediums somehow🤔🤓
You could try this medium. I haven’t used it yet, but it seems like You can turn traditional oils into water miscible.
I'm sure you've seen Camille d'Errico's work before - she works in pop surrealism. She's published several books on her works and techniques. She uses primarily water-mixable oils, usually the Holbein Aqua-Duo brand. In her book "Pop Painting", she talks about being one of the only artists she knows that uses water-mixable oils. She mentions a lot of techniques, including mixing them with acrylic paint - something you could never do with traditional oil paint. I really recommend that book in particular.
I only use water-mixables, but I use them with modified thinner and linseed oil from winsor and newton. Highly recommend! I find it no different to regular oils and it's so easy to clean up with just soap and water and also no toxic smells :)
As someone who has been pairing for 20+ years I gotta say I love water mixable oil especially using them with my students. For its the same with all mediums just takes getting used to using them. But I love the ease of cleaning. Also for oils whether traditional or water mixable starting with gesso on your canvas is a major help when it comes to how the paint sits on the canvas
No way! This video could not of come out at a better time! I just started learning oils, and decided to start with water soluble ones for safety reasons, and I’m so excited other people are trying them too!
You can use water-mixable mediums instead of water, and use the water just to clean the brushes
You mentioned slow-drying acrylics. It would be interesting to compare the two. Maybe a half-and-half situation like you did with the crayons and pastels.
I've been using these exclusively since the beginning! Never tried actual oils, and I love them so dearly. Don't see myself switching ever!
WAKE UP GUYS LILSTARNERD JUST POSTED ‼️‼️‼️ I'm sure this video is gonna be fire
I love your art so much and I'm proud of you for being where you are
I got the same set a few weeks ago for $10!!!
I dud myself a favor and pocked up some mediums that were specifically made for water mixable oils, because I’ve heard that they are hard to work with without additional mediums, and that water just doesn’t do it.
I have tried the cobra oil paints and fell in love with them. Granted, i've only tried actual oil paints once so I can't compare those well.
Just tried Cobras this past week - I have decades of oil and acrylic painting experience and am very impressed by the Cobras bring together the best of both worlds and not needing a thinner. I did start using them with a little bit of Cobra medium to get the flow going well.
Love this!! I've never heard of water mixable oils and I also used to work in a craft store! Lol. Might have to check it out.
I love your painting 😍 my first try with water mixable oils was a desaster, I used winsor and newton artisan and didn't liked them at all. Then I saw your video and wanted to give them another go. I buyed the Georgians and now I love them😍
Your painting is amazing
I use traditional oil but there is also a watermixable oil that I tried and liked the brand is called "cobra" it's pretty creamy pretty similar to traditional oil. I used it as underpainting in the past though.
Also you can use some mediums (for water mixable oil) to easyly move the paint. But I do recommend that you apply 1 or two coats of gesso before painting since most of those cheap canvas barely put gesso on them. I got a feeling that's what the issue you were having or like you said do the underpainting first, so you can better spread the paint on the canvas.
I've never tried oils because they scare me but I feel like I'd be much more up for trying these! 😍
I was excited to see this! I'm painting Dani right now too. I think she is the definition of a hero.
Windsor and newton water mixable oils were utterly gorgeous when I tried them a few years ago!! Unfortunately I never ended up making anything finished with them because I’m just not much of a painter in general but they were really nice. Now I’m stuck with like 4 tubes of fancy paint and no desire to use them aha
Sell them
I love water-mixable oils! I use Winsor-Newton Brand and linseed oil as a medium. I don't get to use them as often as I wish I could, since I have VERY limited space and ventilation in my apartment. I still do some small studies fairly often, but until I have storage/drying space, it's really tough to work with them on larger pieces.
Nice one - I have been using them for few years and stumbled across them by chance and just had to go for it….and now I will not bother with the traditional method of oils paints this is awesome it’s brilliant cost same as traditional oil paints and they gave me the same results no one could tell the difference between them just you have to find the right brand that you feel comfortable with Windsor & Newton is same as Daler Rowney also used cobra paint not that much difference then there are others but yet to try them but not in hurry I’m happy with W&N and Daler ….. and Hello to all the artist who use them 😊
it took me almost the end of the video to realise that she was painting from the haunting of Bly manorrr!!!! EEE LOVE THE FINAL PEICE
it turned out so nice 🥺
Good on you for trying a new medium! I really want to try water-mixable oils, and honestly this looks like it turned out really nice! Just like an oil painting, right? ;)
"Easy" cleanup can happen with oils, too - many painters use lots of brushes (no need to clean brushes with Gamsol mid-painting) + use safflower oil as a brush dip to preserve brushes between sessions. You can leave the brushes alone for a week or two that way, especially with the longer-drying oils. Simply wipe well when you want to start painting again, and you're good to go! Also, you *can* use soap (Dawn, Murphy's Oil Soap, Masters Brush Cleaner, etc) to clean your brushes, just like you would when you do your dishes! It just takes longer than if you use OMS.
The real problem is OMS is great for thinning paint in the earlier underpainting stages. I've been experimenting with watercolor/gouache as a base layer - I read that it's possible to seal this with a 50/50 Galkyd/Gamsol mix before oil painting to protect the watercolor layer from future varnish, which (although not completely OMS-free) is significantly less time dealing with poisons, and could be done far away from the studio since it's just a single simple layer.
I really enjoyed this video, and definitely am subscribing! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on WMO!
I know a lot of professional artists that use Georgian, and the lack of black is pretty standard I think in oils as more traditional painting doesn’t necessarily use black. You mix your darks from the colours in the rest of the painting. and it helps if you view the water mixable part as just for cleaning and use the mediums designed for the product to work with it so that it’s archival. There is a question on how archival preliminary washes would be with water as the medium. The main draw for water soluble is being able to avoid toxic ingredients such as cadmium and the use of thinners, but as someone else has said you might get better results if you gesso the canvas first. They are the holy grail for people with allergies and sensitivities to thinners.
Try Holbein Duo Aqua or Cobra. They are water soluble that are more buttery and closer to standard oil. Holbein are my favorite and are heavy on pigment.
It sounds like this is the type of medium to be used as a finisher. So use acrylic to lay down initial washes of color and then use the water soluble oils as detailer
As an oil painter in former life (before I got sick), I have to say that I don't really get water mixable oils... My technique always was to never use solvents and clean up without solvents so when I 'switched' to w/s oils, my only reason was trying if I could handle the smell. What I found out, was that w/s oils almost require you to use a medium when painting or they just... Idk, granulate? It's this weird separation feeling, especially if you add any water. And I think they take less water than regular oils take turps/solvent to 'break down'. So you have to be a lot more precise with how wet your brush is, how much solvent (water) in your mixes etc.
I don't find Georgian oils vs. w/s oils to have that much of a difference, they are both fairly 'thin' paints. For some things that's great, but others it is annoying and you'll feel like you're using a lot. Same with W&N: I find both lines to be a lot thicker.
So, what did I learn? That I really don't care for w/s oils. They do the job alright, but for me it takes me more to work with them than with good quality traditional oils. Are they a bad medium? No, but again, for me w/s oils feels like a more involved medium to get something good out of them, compared to traditional oils.
And here's the big thing: all paints require ventilation and safety precautions. Just because you might not smell something, it doesn't mean it's not harmful! People seem to think that especially acrylics are a safe, non-toxic alternative to oils. NOT SO. Acrylics can emit fumes just like any other paint, even more so than neat oil paints, as it's plastic curing. Good quality, modern paints are always safer but not without harmful aspects. If you have a neat oil paint (pigment + pure oil) and don't use any solvents, that's as non-toxic as you can get. Just don't pick the toxic pigments. 😜
Whenever I use regular oils I enjoy the process and end up with something decent. Whenever I use water soluble oils, since I have them I want to use them, I always fight with them, can't make details because they are too thin and just disappear or make a gloop, they get super tacky when drying which makes new layers of paint apply weird on top of the tacky paint, and I don't use solvents with regular oils anyway so I don't get to specially enjoy the feature that makes them unique
I hate the misconception about toxicity oils have too. I never see people complain about cadmiums in water colors or acrylics but when it comes to oils people treat them like the devil.
It's also transitioning to water based oils (Cobra brand), because acrylics by Golden (called Open) became super expensive. So now they expect us to pay $12 for just 2oz tube, and it becomes really hard to build a sizable collection. I have a giant collection of oil paints (spanning over 10 yrs now), so I'm very much used to slow-drying mediums. But Golden expects us artists to be billionaires in the making 😂
I have had some water mixable oils that I still haven’t tried. I think it’s time!
The reflections at your glasses caused me a lot of stress! You should use overhead light 😫
alas overhead light is simply not enough
Awesome 😎 I use Van Gogh H2 Oils cause ❤ hated the smell of pain remover’s I like them it’s just sad I can’t find them anymore !
That range was discontinued by Royal Talens because it was not up to their standards, and they then reworked their water solubles line in order to provide better performance and released it as their Cobra brand line of water soluble oil paints. So, you may want to check those out!
what a coincidence, i just got a massive 5 dollar deal on 6 watermixable oil tubes! good to know the gods have decided that water mixable oils shall be spread to the masses in the form of deals lol
amazing video
Isn't a concern that they might not necessarily be as archival as regular oil, like there hasn't been enough time to test that, and often adding ingredients to oil can mess that up?
thanks for this video, i was curious about this medium since i'm very allergic to all the fumes surrounding traditional oil paints. i guess if they still smell of oil, even a little, i should avoid them. too bad...
you did get some nice blending with them🙂 lol submission for the county fair, know exactly what you mean 🙃🙂
I keep meaning to buy a set of these to try since I cant use actual oil paints due to all of the extra chemicals you come in contact with when using oils. def would still use them outside tho (if it ever tops raining lol)
From watching the whole video, and listening to the whole voiceover, as another non-expert, I think you drew unfairly generalized conclusions based on painting a rushed picture on a dry, ungesso-ed canvas, and having trouble moving the paint. That said, the painting itself seemed to come out really well, especially considering how much you were stressing over it. It's probably worth taking the health considerations more seriously, given the risks associated with long-term exposure to traditional solvents.
I feel like water mixables would be good for school art programs?? (and I say this as someone who has never used oils or water mixables...) My school's art room is already packed as it is, so I feel like it sounds like a good way to test if you like oils without taking up extra space with solvents. Also i know so many younger art students sometimes don't realize the cost of the supplies they use, so they end up being more wasteful and so I feel like this is a less costly option??
As an acrylic artist I have been dying to try these because we all know acrylic does not have the blending capability of oil
I use wate rmixable oils because, even though I love the way oils feel, I just can't handle the smell. I've even tried using odourless mineral spirits and painting outside, but it was just too disgusting. Odourless, my bottom!
There are mediums designed for use with water mixable oils which really help and are worth looking at, and do the same jobs as those for ordinary oils.
Water mixable oils did simmer in popularity for quite a while, but they're on the up. I use Cobra or Artisan, but even Daniel Smith and Holbein have recently brought out ranges. They're slightly more expensive than ordinary oils because of the extra processes involved to make them, but it's worth it not to want to vomit at the smell.
Regular oils and watermixable oils to me smell the same. Watermixable smell a tad sweeter but that's it. I don't use solvents because they make me lightheaded
I personally don't like water mixable oils. I have both water mixable and traditional and every time I use the water mixable ones, I struggle a lot. Using traditional and water mixable is like day and night. They don't get as pigmented, they get extremely tacky and stay that way for a while compared to traditional, and I don't use solvents with my traditional so my only advantage would be saving a couple of minutes washing them.
I have cobra, which I think they are too thin for my liking, and artisan, which are okay.
I understand why you don’t like doing too much research because you don’t want to be too influenced by other people before experimenting with a new medium, but don’t shut yourself off completely from doing so! it can provide you with some guidance for issues that most people will run into so you can avoid some of that frustration. then people who see your video can also find out how to avoid those frustrations. then you save yourself some grief and have more time to enjoy the process and really explore the medium!
PSA: All paints are toxic if they use toxic pigments. They're harmful when ingested, or if they get soaked into someone's skin. When paint dries, the vapors from the water, oil, alcohol, and/or plastic emit fumes, even if you can't smell it. I say this because there's a huge misconseption about oil paints being dangerous to paint with. If you want to try oil paint, you can opt for "non-toxic" solutions such as mediums and oils that don't have toxic chemicals in them. That way when you clean your brushes and mix mediums in with your paint, it's not emitting the same levels of toxicity. Unless you use toxic pigments.. Nothing fixes that except buying the non-toxic synthetic version of those specific pigments. Water mixable oil paints are still oil paint. The formula they use to make the paints is different than traditional oils, obviously, and for this reason not a lot of artists use water mixable oils. Why? Because even the companies that make them admit that they don't know the lightfast and long term quality of the paints. Water and oil don't mix, yet they've found a way to make them "mix". So no one knows what will happen to the paintings in the long term. In 50-100 years the paintings could fade, crack, or chip away. So a lot of artists just don't know how trust worthy the paints are long term. And again, there are ways to use traditional oil paint without using harmful solvents or pigments (from what we know). Regardless, even when using watercolour or acrylic paints, you should work in a well ventilated room and not be directly inhaling the fumes from ANY paint if it's something you're worried about. Another thing to note; even synthetic pigments could have toxic properties. They are made in labs using specific compounds, chemicals, and methods such as extreme heat to achieve the pigment. Just because no one has had reactions to the synthetic pigments yet, it doesn't mean they never will. Not to mention the people making those pigments have to take extreme caution just to bring them about. Everything in life is subject to change and learning new things about them. Lead and aspestos weren't concidered toxic until years after use when they linked serious health conditions and death to those specific things. No one can say 100% something is safe or non-toxic because sometimes symtoms aren't linked to the source until many many years later, the reason being that we experience and expose ourselves to new and different things every single day, so there are many factors to take into consideration when trying to claim something as safe or non-toxic. Similarly to how one can be allergic to specific foods, aromas, or plants while another person isn't. The same can be said for pigments and other paint properties.
if you wanna sell it, don't trash talk the piece. Doesn't inspire in people anything in order to buy it.