Ecological solvents

I have used odourless thinners successfully in the past but I have switched to water mixable oils now. I have since found a medium which will convert "real" oil paints into water mixable ones. You´ll find a video about it here https://youtu.be/SeReFHSxI8M

I like the smell of artists quality turps, although it does hang around - fine in an artist's studio, but a overpowering in a small house. I normally use W & N Sansodor for oil painting. I've just tried a bottle of Zest - it, a solvent with a smell of citrus. It's more expensive than Sansodor. the citrus smell isn't that obvious when painting. I think Sansodor is the better product.

It's odd that there appear to be rigid national boundaries preventing substances available in one country from being obtainable, or easily obtainable, in another. We have a number of safer - I'm not sure they're entirely safe - solvents. One of these is Zest-it, which is a non-hazardous solvent derived from citrus fruit - I keep meaning to try it, but haven't as yet. Another, which is also said to be safe and from the sound of it might be similar to your Swedish product, is Gamsol: this is made by the US Gamblin company, and is now readily available here. Both Winsor and Newton make low-odour thinners: Sansodor and Low Odour Thinners respectively - I do use the first of these, but not for cleaning brushes, purely because White Spirit/Mineral Spirits is cheaper (but does smell horribly). I'm told that White Spirit is actually less injurious to health than Turpentine - which may be true, but the smell of Turps is much less offensive. I don't use water-soluble paint because I don't think it's of sufficient quality - but a) I've seen very good work produced with it, and b) I've yet to watch Pat's video: when I do, I might come back for a further stab at this. Be it said as well: I am not concerned, in general, by the toxicity of paint: if I were, I wouldn't use lead-based whites. All sorts of things are toxic, but you don't have to ingest them or rub them on like hand-cream - generally, the precautions we can take against them are adequately protective. Some painters have suffered from exposure to hazardous materials, but most of us manage to get into a reasonably old age; I'm aiming for Chagall's 99. You can avoid toxic colours - the lead whites and genuine Naples Yellow; the Cadmiums, the metallic colours generally (although not all of them are in any way hazardous, and those that are, are minimally so). But if you do you will sacrifice colour intensity - azo, pyrrole, quinacridone, perylene, anthraquinone: there are many newer chemical formulations, and many of them are both excellent colours and have the advantage of being far more lightfast than some of the colours they've replaced. However, there is no red that has the intensity of Cadmium, no Yellow that has the intensity and opacity of Cadmium either. And we've already discussed the problems with whites. I'm much less concerned with making oil paint "safe" than I am with the quality of the paint - chemists and some factory workers use corrosive liquids, carpenters use saws and bradawls, butchers use forks and fearsome cutting implements.... hazard can be managed and minimized: total safety is not obtainable and I doubt that I'd want it if I could find it.

Solvents? Nah. Spread it on thick and keep the brushes for the acrylics... ;-)

Van Gogh's bigger problem was with Chrome Yellow - which was cheaper than Cadmium but fugitive. The Cadmium colours available today are also likely to be better made than they were when the first cadmium paints became available, in around 1840. It's classified as being a very low risk environmentally - and many painters rely on them: Helen Van Wyck may find Cadmium Red Deep useless in the colour mixing system she uses, but she will be almost alone in dismissing it altogether. It does have a use in colour mixing: I know, because I use it. I wouldn't normally be wanting to use a metallic paint with a lead white, incidentally - I can't pretend that I understand the science (coz I don't! I expect Amanda will...) but while I use lead white I'm cautious of the colours I use it with. I should be interested though in getting my hands on Beckers Red Light - I must check on PR 168. There are safe solvents available - eg Gamsol, which is easier to get hold of it than it used to be. The dangerous ones are Turpentine, and White Spirit - the latter also being generally unsatisfactory as a solvent for use with oil paint anyway. I don't think, Amanda, that it's an answer to say don't use it, but employ knives .... even though you're right of course that you almost never need medium with painting knives. I have them, but I don't want to be using them all the time. I quite like the smell of Turps, by the way, but stopped using it through concern with health problems some time ago - and I must ditch the White Spirit for cleaning up afterwards - I don't know if it'll kill me or not, but it smells as if it really wants to.

PR 168 is Anthraqinone Scarlet - not much used worldwide, but it's said to be an interesting red paint with high lightfastness - useful, apparently, for botanical studies and portraits, but less effective as a general-purpose red paint. So there you are - I don't know of any oil paint manufacturer (other than the one Mats has mentioned, obviously, Becker) that uses it, but there doesn't seem to be any good reason why they shouldn't. Maimeri use it in one of their watercolours, though - a very satisfying paint range, on the whole, and one well worth investigating. I discover that the introduction of Cadmium Red dates from ca. 1910, while the Cad Yellow is, as I said, an older development - by some 50 years or more. I just know you all wanted to know that..... I remain puzzled by Helen Van Wyck's comment, but then I'm not one of her followers.

Just to round this off, or kill it off possibly, for the sake of completeness. Helen Van Wyk died in 1994 - I spent part of last night when, as customarily, I couldn't sleep, reading about her and dipping into a few of her books on Amazon. This did not enable me to form any real assessment of her colour mixing theories, or "recipes", but I did notice a few things (one of them being that I'd been mis-spelling her name, but I don't suppose she'll mind). She found Cadmium Red Medium and Deep impossible to work with because they are "dark", and mix badly with white. As alternatives, she used Cad Red Light, Grumbacher Red, and Alizarin Crimson. Well - these seemed to work for her.... Grumbacher Red is, or was then anyway, a Napthol red - while Alizarin Crimson was one of the few crimsons available when Van Wyk was learning to paint, but has been largely superseded by the colour variously known as Permanent Rose, Quinacridone Violet, or Rose, because of permanency issues; or by Permanent Alizarin Crimson (always dangerous to take that word "permanent" literally - it can mean "permanent by comparison with what it replaced, which wasn't permanent at all"). Napthol red doesn't enjoy a very high reputation these days, although as I've never used Grumbacher's variant I can't comment on it; and I don't use Alizarin Crimson any more. Of course, the two Cad reds she mentions are not bright reds - hence their names.... So they will be dark by comparison with Cad Red Light. She may have meant dull, but if she did I can only say I disagree. As for mixing them with white - well yes, you'll get a rather dubious pink if you do that with Titanium White - referring back to our earlier discussions on Zinc White, which so far as I can see Van Wyk used rather extensively, it'll give clearer mixes. But If you're using the Cad reds in mass tone, I doubt that you'd be mixing them with white anyway - I find them useful for just tinting white, to indicate, eg, branches and twigs caught by light; or for light passages on water. Summarizing - I suspect that like most of us, Van Wyk had her prejudices and her favourites; I don't think she was especially interested in the composition of colours, or maybe very knowledgeable about them: when she was painting, much work on colour and pigment composition and lightfastness had yet to be done - and she had, sadly, more to worry about in the last few years of her life than these technical questions. There are more reliable guides to colour - Tony Paul, whose book was mentioned here the other day, being one of them.

Ah, bright red does make much more sense, thanks for the correction. The Chinese emperors used to sign their proclamations in Vermilion. It certainly commands attention.