For those of you new to painting there are many different materials or "mediums" to paint with. From acrylics, oils, and watercolors, to gauche and tempera each of these materials have there own unique properties. For the past eight years I have been working with oil paints. Oil paints are slow drying paints composed of pigment suspended in oil; usually linseed oil which is extracted from flax plants. The key distinction from oil paint and those listed above is oils are not water soluble.
Common pigments used in oil paints can be divided onto two categories mineral salts and earth pigments. Mineral salts include titanium, zinc, and cadmium, these salts create whites and the color hues from yellow to red. Earth pigments have been used for thousands of years and were used to create the first known paintings located in the caves of Chauve, France (see above). The earth pigments include umbers and siennas. Unlike the raw pigments, the burnt varieties are extracted from clays by heating and driving off the water from the clay, leaving behind the charred pigment. Hence the name burnt umber and burnt sienna. Many names for the pigments also come from the places where the minerals were first found. Sienna, short for "terra di Siena" was originally extracted in Siena, Italy. While umber from the Italian word "umbra" meaning shadow, was originally was mined in Umbria, a mountainous region of central Italy.
Why use oil paint and what is the advantage of using oils, over the easy to clean water soluble paints mentioned above? The one number reason to use oils is color and luminosity of the medium. Because the pigments are suspended in oil the color maintains an inner light or luminosity when dried. I have also noticed a richness of color with the medium of oil. With acrylics, the more you blend color the "muddier" the color becomes, however with oil color the more you blend color becomes more sophisticated it becomes. Artists also take advantage of oil's slow drying time; because the painting can be wet up to 10 days (depending on levels of humidity) you are able to go back in and rework the piece. Watercolors in contrast to oils, dry very quickly and can be quite unforgiving.
