Help, confused

Hi Sueman. You are right by painting thin with turps to start with and painting thicker later . For that I used . half and half turps and linseed oil so that the paint isnt too oily. I am sure our friend Robert Jones will give you good advice when he spots your post. ....Syd

Syd has this right - there are many mediums you can use, but when you're beginning I would suggest a good traditional medium like the half and half thinners (turpentine, Sansodor, or Low Odour Thinners [these are mineral spirits]) and refined Linseed oil. You don't need to add the medium to everything, just to the paint that seems to need it. There's already an oil in the paint itself, so if you apply your turps in the early layers you needn't worry about painting over them in unthinned paint. You can move on to all sorts of mediums - stand oil, sun thickened Linseed, Liquin, for instance - as you gain experience and want to experiment but much of the time the simple solution is the best. Some say add a varnish to your medium, but I really wouldn't do that - the trouble with doing so is that sooner or later the painting will need to be cleaned, i.e. to have the old varnish removed. If you've used varnish in your medium, there's nothing to stop that coming off as well, with half of your paint layers. There's also a medium made by Winsor and Newton, simply called Artists Painting Medium: this is quite adequate, and an alternative to making up your own medium with turps and Linseed. I go into this in my e-book Oil Paint Basics (by Robert Phillip Jones) available on the Amazon Kindle Store - but my basic advice is to keep it simple; and it seems to me you're doing the right thing - adding too much extra oil won't only cause your painting to take forever to dry, especially with Titanium White and the genuine Cadmium colours, but it can make the painting process a bit like wading through an oil slick. I'm presuming you're using regular oils rather than water miscible ones, eg the Artisan range: the same general principles apply, except you can use water as the thinner, and the Linseed is modified to be usable; I don't personally use these, but you still need to be careful not to use too much oil, certainly not in the first layers where you should use none, and sparingly in what goes on top. Hope that helps - always feel free to come back with any further questions.

Well Sue, many moons ago now I had exactly the same problem, there are so many products out there and they all tell you how necessary they are to be able to paint in oils. I've tried the lot, as many of us have and very quickly came to the conclusion that you don't need to spend all this money on mediums. I eventually settled on one medium, the same one that many professional artists use and that is simply distilled turpentine, I use Winsor & Newton brand and is all you really need, if I am painting outdoors and want quicker drying I will add a spot of Alkyd medium. My moto has always been to 'keep it simple', especially when painting 'en-plein-air', but the same rule can apply in the studio.

I have used a 50:50 mixture of Galkyd (gamblin's alkyd medium) and Gamsol (gamblin's OMS) with good results but have also used Liquin on its' own without any problem. If using the Galkyd/Gamsol mix it keeps well if you always add a little Gamsol to the jar after use to provide a protective layer against the air turning the mix to jelly. The trick is to use any medium sparingly in the first thinner layers and omit it as far as possible in the upper fatter layers. Research and Development (better known as Trial and Error) is the best route and you'll soon find what works for you. Having said all that I use turps as per Alan's advice when painting plein air and that works OK as long as you are careful with turps in the upper layers.

Hi, I also had the same issues when I first moved to oils from Acrylics. My method now is to underpaint and block in with just distlled turps (which also has the benefit of drying quickly), I then have have 2 plastic pippet bottles with a mix of 20 x 80 and 50 x 50 % turps to linseed oil. I just keep step up the oil % with each layer of paint. I will also glaze with liquin and as I use palette knife methods a lot , just straight from the tube.