Oil paint - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Oil_paint

Oil paint
Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that
consists of particles of pigment suspended in
a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The
viscosity of the paint may be modified by the
addition of a solvent such as turpentine or
white spirit, and varnish may be added to
increase the glossiness of the dried oil paint
film. Oil paints were first used in Asia as
early as the 7th century AD and can be seen
in examples of Buddhist paintings in
Afghanistan. Oil-based paints made their
way to Europe by the 12th century and were
used for simple decoration, but oil painting
did not begin to be adopted as an artistic
medium there until the early 15th century.
Common modern applications of oil paint
are in finishing and protection of wood in View of Delft in oil paint, by Johannes Vermeer.
buildings and exposed metal structures such
as ships and bridges. Its hard-wearing
properties and luminous colors make it desirable for both interior and exterior use on wood and
metal. Due to its slow-drying properties, it has recently been used in paint-on-glass animation. The
thickness of the coat has considerable bearing on the time required for drying: thin coats of oil
paint dry relatively quickly.

Contents
History
First recorded use
Classical and medieval period
Renaissance onwards
Paint tube
Carrier
Characteristics
Sources
Extraction methods and processing
Pigment
Toxicity
See also
References
External links

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History
The technical history of the introduction and development of oil paint, and the date of introduction
of various additives (driers, thinners) is still—despite intense research since the mid 19th century—
not well understood. The literature abounds with incorrect theories and information: in general,
anything published before 1952 is suspect.[1] Until 1991 nothing was known about the organic
aspect of cave paintings from the Paleolithic era. Many assumptions were made about the
chemistry of the binders. Well known Dutch-American artist Willem de Kooning is known for
saying "Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented".[2]

First recorded use

The oldest known oil paintings are Buddhist murals created circa 650 AD. The works are located in
cave-like rooms carved from the cliffs of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, "using walnut and poppy
seed oils."[3]

Classical and medieval period

Though the ancient Mediterranean civilizations of Greece, Rome, and Egypt used vegetable oils,
there is little evidence to indicate their use as media in painting. Indeed, linseed oil was not used as
a medium because of its tendency to dry very slowly, darken, and crack, unlike mastic and wax (the
latter of which was used in encaustic painting).

Greek writers such as Aetius Amidenus recorded recipes involving the use of oils for drying, such as
walnut, poppy, hempseed, pine nut, castor, and linseed. When thickened, the oils became resinous
and could be used as varnish to seal and protect paintings from water. Additionally, when yellow
pigment was added to oil, it could be spread over tin foil as a less expensive alternative to gold leaf.

Early Christian monks maintained these records and used the techniques in their own artworks.
Theophilus Presbyter, a 12th-century German monk, recommended linseed oil but advocated
against the use of olive oil due to its long drying time. Oil paint was mainly used as it is today in
house decoration, as a tough waterproof cover for exposed woodwork, especially outdoors.

In the 13th century, oil was used to detail tempera paintings. In the 14th century, Cennino Cennini
described a painting technique utilizing tempera painting covered by light layers of oil. The slow-
drying properties of organic oils were commonly known to early painters. However, the difficulty in
acquiring and working the materials meant that they were rarely used (and indeed the slow drying
was seen as a disadvantage[4]).

Renaissance onwards

As the public preference for naturalism increased, the quick-drying tempera paints became
insufficient to achieve the very detailed and precise effects that oil could achieve. The Early
Netherlandish painting of the 15th century saw the rise of panel painting purely in oils, or oil
painting, or works combining tempera and oil painting, and by the 16th-century easel painting in
pure oils had become the norm. The claim by Vasari that Jan van Eyck "invented" oil painting,
while it has cast a long shadow, is not correct, but van Eyck's use of oil paint achieved novel results

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in terms of precise detail and mixing colors wet-on-wet with a skill hardly equaled since. Van
Eyck's mixture may have consisted of piled glass, calcined bones, and mineral pigments boiled in
linseed oil until they reached a viscous state—or he may have simply used sun-thickened oils
(slightly oxidized by Sun exposure).

The Flemish-trained or influenced Antonello da Messina, who Vasari wrongly credited with the
introduction of oil paint to Italy,[5] does seem to have improved the formula by adding litharge, or
lead (II) oxide. The new mixture had a honey-like consistency and better drying properties (drying
evenly without cracking). This mixture was known as oglio cotto—"cooked oil." Leonardo da Vinci
later improved these techniques by cooking the mixture at a very low temperature and adding 5 to
10% beeswax, which prevented the darkening of the paint. Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto each
may have altered this recipe for their own purposes.

Paint tube

The paint tube was invented in 1841 by portrait painter John Goffe
Rand,[6] superseding pig bladders and glass syringes[7] as the
primary tool of paint transport. Artists, or their assistants,
previously ground each pigment by hand, carefully mixing the
binding oil in the proper proportions. Paints could now be
produced in bulk and sold in tin tubes with a cap. The cap could
be screwed back on and the paints preserved for future use,
providing flexibility and efficiency to painting outdoors. The
manufactured paints had a balanced consistency that the artist
could thin with oil, turpentine, or other mediums. Tubes of various colors.

Paint in tubes also changed the way some artists approached

painting. The artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir said, “Without tubes of paint, there would have been no
impressionism.” For the impressionists, tubed paints offered an easily accessible variety of colors
for their plein air palettes, motivating them to make spontaneous color choices.

Carrier

Characteristics

Traditional oil paints require an oil that always

hardens, forming a stable, impermeable film. Such
oils are called causative, or drying, oils, and are
characterized by high levels of polyunsaturated fatty Representative component of a drying oil, this
acids. One common measure of the causative particular triester is derived from three
property of oils is iodine number, the number of unsaturated fatty acids, linoleic (top), alpha-
grams of iodine one hundred grams of oil can linolenic (middle), and oleic acids (bottom). The
absorb. Oils with an iodine number greater than 130 order of drying rate is linolenic > linoleic > oleic
are considered drying, those with an iodine number acid, reflecting their degree of unsaturation.
of 115–130 are semi-drying, and those with an
iodine number of less than 115 are non-drying.
Linseed oil, the most prevalent vehicle for artists' oil paints, is a drying oil.

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When exposed to air, oils do not undergo the same evaporation process that water does. Instead,
they dry semisolid. The rate of this process can be very slow, depending on the oil.

The advantage of the slow-drying quality of oil paint is that an artist can develop a painting
gradually. Earlier media such as egg tempera dried quickly, which prevented the artist from
making changes or corrections. With oil-based paints, revising was comparatively easy. The
disadvantage is that a painting might take months or years to finish, which might disappoint an
anxious patron. Oil paints blend well with each other, making subtle variations of color possible as
well as creating many details of light and shadow. Oil paints can be diluted with turpentine or other
thinning agents, which artists take advantage of to paint in layers.

There is also another kind of oil paint that is water-mixable, making the cleaning and using process
easier and less toxic.

Sources

The earliest and still most commonly used vehicle is linseed oil,
pressed from the seed of the flax plant. Modern processes use
heat or steam to produce refined varieties of oil with fewer
impurities, but many artists prefer cold-pressed oils.[8] Other
vegetable oils such as hemp, poppy seed, walnut, sunflower,
safflower, and soybean oils may be used as alternatives to
linseed oil for a variety of reasons. For example, safflower and
poppy oils are paler than linseed oil and allow for more vibrant
whites straight from the tube. Three oil paints, one of which is
mixed with wax

Extraction methods and processing

Once the oil is extracted, additives are sometimes used to modify its chemical properties. In this
way, the paint can be made to dry more quickly (if that is desired), or to have varying levels of
gloss, like Liquin. Modern oils paints can, therefore, have complex chemical structures; for
example, affecting resistance to UV. By hand, the process involves first mixing the paint pigment
with the linseed oil to a crumbly mass on a glass or marble slab. Then, a small amount at a time is
ground between the slab and a glass Muller (a round, flat-bottomed glass instrument with a
handgrip). Pigment and oil are ground together 'with patience' until a smooth, ultra-fine paste is
achieved. This paste is then placed into jars or metal paint tubes and labeled.

Pigment
The color of oil paint is derived from small particles of colored pigments mixed with the carrier, the
oil. Common pigment types include mineral salts such as white oxides: zinc oxide, titanium
dioxide, and the red to yellow cadmium pigments. Another class consists of earth types, the main
ones being ochre, sienna and umber. Still another group of pigments comes from living organisms,
such as madder root. Synthetic organic pigments are also now available. Natural pigments have the
advantage of being well understood through centuries of use, but synthetics have greatly increased
the spectrum of available colors, and many have attained a high level of lightfastness.

When oil paint was first introduced in the arts, basically the same limited range of available

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pigments were used that had already been applied

in tempera: yellow ochre, umber, lead-tin-yellow,
vermilion, kermes, azurite, ultramarine, verdigris,
lamp black and lead white. These pigments strongly
varied in price, transparency, and lightfastness.
They included both inorganic and organic
substances, the latter often being far less
permanent. The painter bought them from
specialized traders, "color men", and let his
apprentices grind them with oil in his studio to
obtain paint of the desired viscosity.

During the Age of discovery, new pigments became

Pigments for sale at a market stall in Goa, India.
known in Europe, most of the organic and earthy
type, such as Indian yellow. In the eighteenth
century, the developing science of chemistry deliberately tried to expand the range of pigments,
which led to the discovery of Prussian blue and cobalt blue.

Toxicity

Many of the historical pigments were dangerous, and many pigments still in use are highly toxic.
Some of the most poisonous pigments, such as Paris green (copper(II) acetoarsenite) and orpiment
(arsenic sulfide), have fallen from use.

Many pigments are toxic to some degree. Commonly used reds and yellows are produced using
cadmium, and vermilion red uses natural or synthetic mercuric sulfide or cinnabar. Flake white
and Cremnitz white are made with basic lead carbonate. Some intense blue colors, including cobalt
blue and cerulean blue, are made with cobalt compounds. Some varieties of cobalt violet are made
with cobalt arsenate.

See also
!"Acrylic paint
!"Acrylic painting techniques
!"Drying oil
!"Egg tempera
!"List of art media
!"Oil painting
!"Semi-drying oil
!"Watercolor
!"Oil painting reproduction

References
!"[9] 8 Benefits Of Oil Painting Kits For Beginners, The Stationery Company.
!"Mayer, Ralph. The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques Viking Adult; 5th revised and

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updated edition, 1991. ISBN 0-670-83701-6

!"Gottsegen, Mark David. The Painter's Handbook Watson-Guptill; Revised and expanded, 2006
ISBN 978-0-8230-3496-3
1. Coremans, Gettens, Thissen, La technique des Primitifs flamands, Studies in Conservation 1
(1952)
2. " "Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented": Chaim Soutine at the Jewish Museum" (https://art
critical.com/2018/07/13/david-carrier-on-chaim-soutine/). 13 July 2018.
3. "Oldest Oil Paintings Found in Afghanistan" (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/19/oldest-
oil-painting.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20110603234713/http://dsc.discovery.c
om/news/2008/02/19/oldest-oil-painting.html) June 3, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Rosella
Lorenzi, Discovery News. Feb. 19, 2008.
4. Theophilus Presbyter Book I ch. 25
5. Barbera, Giocchino (2005). Antonello da Messina, Sicily's Renaissance Master (exhibition
catalogue). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11648-9
(online) (http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/513
92), p. 14
6. Hurt, Perry. "Never Underestimate the Power of a Paint Tube" (http://www.smithsonianmag.co
m/arts-culture/Never-Underestimate-the-Power-of-a-Paint-Tube-204116801.html). Smithsonian
Magazine. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
7. Callen, Anthea. The Art of Impressionism: How Impressionism Changed the Art World. Yale
University Press. 2000.
8. H. Gluck, "The Impermanences of Painting in Relation to Artists' Materials", Journal of the
Royal Society of Arts, Volume CXII 1964
9. "Perfect Finishing" (https://www.thestationerycompany.pk/blogs/art/8-benefits-of-oil-painting-kit
s-for-beginners). The Stationery Company.

External links
!"Business Insider, July 13, 2019 "Why Oil Paint Is So Expensive?" (https://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=iib_imkZ5fk) 6 minute YouTube video

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