Hi People :)

Hello, and welcome to the, P.O.L forum, Ian. You're in the right place to ask questions about your adventure into oils. Always good to see another arrival, I hope you will post your work for us to see and also stay around longer than most we welcome. It's a pleasant place here, we don't bite :) :)

May I be honest - (well, it'd be hard to stop me, wouldn't it....?): I think water miscible oils - they don't actually mix with water but can be spread with it owning to the modified oil in which they're ground - have a big question mark over them still; we have no idea how long they'll last, on the rather simplistic grounds that - they've not been around for long enough. Oil paint dries and cures, changes, shrinks, becomes somewhat more transparent, yellows, over many decades. We know more or less how conventional oils dry and change; we know the best (and worst) surfaces for them to be painted on. We don't have the same accumulated knowledge about water miscibles. Apart from which, I've never liked the experience of painting with them - I dislike the pasty element which too much water can cause, and don't enjoy the 'feel' of the paint on the brush. But I have to add, and usually do when talking about them, that my friend Murray Ince produces remarkable work using them, and has had several articles in Leisure Painter magazine extolling them: he uses them for their convenience, and for the fact that they don't require toxic solvents, which give him, and many others, breathing problems. However, since I had bronchitis, solvents give me breathing problems too - but I still use regular oil paints; just no solvents. A little Linseed Oil when necessary makes the paint as workable as I need it to be; and cleaning up afterwards is no more difficult without solvents than with them; you just adjust your methods. But you have water-miscibles - so I recommend you go to Murray Ince's website, and read his articles; maybe move on to regular oils over time; and the brand he uses is Winsor and Newton's Artisan range - though there are others. The techniques for using them are about the same as with standard oil paints - though I suggest you avoid any paint containing Zinc White, and Zinc White itself save for touches in the upper layers - it's identified as PW4 on the label. There's controversy over its use - and it's fair to say that not everyone agrees. But in oil paint, PW4 is known to cause later problems, including cracking and delamination - more especially on flexible surfaces like canvas. I don't know if its use in water miscible oils is any better or worse, but I do avoid it now, in oils anyway.