Oiling out
 

I need to find out if it is ok to carefully oil out with a brush, rather than a rag?

I only want to do this in the grisaille underpainting stages, especially if the painting is almost dry to the touch for the exception of a few spots.


As always your comments would be appreciated.

Hi Enzie, I too am wondering about "oiling out". I have heard so often that one isn't supposed to oil out, but recently I tried it and it works really well. What negative result are we avoiding by following that advice? I know that Odd Nerdrum oils out with raw umber. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Linda

Hi Linda,

I do not know of any negative aspects reagrding oiling out, except for inablility of paint to adhere if too much oil is used. The way I learned to do it is to drip a few drops all over the canvas, leaving roughly a fingers width between each drop. Then taking a soft rag you spread the oil all over the dry canvas making sure you covered all areas. Tilting the canvas helps to see missed spots.

Now this is the important part:

Making sure that your fingers are clean and oil free, you rub a finger tip gently on the canvas and look at it. If it looks like you just bathed in baby oil, then you have used too much oil and need to wipe it off with a dry/clean/unsaturated part of your cloth. The ideal is to have a very slight sheen on your finger. This way the the dark,sunken in areas come back to life and the new paint adheres just fine.

Hope that helps!

The way I have been doing it, is to just paint the oil onto a small area that you will be working in, and then wipe it off with a paper towel. I try to wipe it all off. Of course some will still be left on the painting. So I am not using my fingers at all. A soft cloth could be used to wipe the oil off, as well as a paper towel. It seems to help the painting have more depth and softer edges.

Enzie, in school they taught us to oil out with a brush. The medium we used was one part stand oil, one part damar varnish and three parts English distilled turp. If we got to a point where this wasn't working well enough, we could go to a one/one/one ratio. There always seemed to be a little bit of controversy and/or confusion over whether oiling out or using retouch was best. I tend to use retouch first, and then if that doesn't work well enough I go to oiling out with the 1/1/3 ratio. I wait as long as possible before I add anything to the painting process, and if I can avoid it, I do. That's just my preference, easier to manage the fat over lean that way. I've never tried glazing.

Linda, I would be concerned about fibers from a paper towel sticking to my painting. The only time I use paper towels on a painting is for wiping out mistakes in the lay-in process.

I have seen Alexei Antonov just pour oil on the dry canvas and use his hand. I would be too afraid to end up with way too much oil on the canvas. Great to hear the different techniques though!

So I can finalise values as I'm finishing off a monochrome underpainting I'll oil out before a painting session (the painting is usually at least 4-6 days dry). I'll give it a very fine wipe of linseed oil (palm of the hand to spread it around works well then wiping thoroughly off with a low linting cloth like a fine jersey).

For more long term controlling of those pesky sinking in traits, of umbers in particular, I'll very lightly brush on a weak retouch... but beware - tempting as it is even a little too much stand oil/dammar/retouch in your underpainting makes for a very unworkable and unpleasant surface for glazing or whatever other technique you favour... I've made that mistake before and ended up having to sand the whole thing back to get rid of a too slick surface!

Cheers
MJ

After some experimenting here I am finding my oiling out needs to be very minimal. I just did the one little face once and it was sufficient to make it glow properly. I have tried the stand oil mixture and some other things on edges of the painting, but the cold pressed linseed oil with a touch of damar gave me the texture I was after and dried satiny. I am finding that the Michael Harding paint, by itself ,dries with a bit of a shine, which I like.

Enzie,

For the best results, wait until the paint is dry before you try to work over it. I oil out with plain old cold-pressed linseed oil, scrubbed on thinly with a hog-bristle brush over the area to be painted into, and then I blot or rub off as much as will come off with a soft rag or paper towel. Only the tiniest amount of oil is needed to serve the purpose. The solvent in your medium will act on the paint that's already there, and if you're wiping, some of it is liable to come off. Oil paints don't need to have solvents in them. Solvents weaken the adhesive strength of the binding oil in the paint.

Virgil Elliott

Thanks Virgil! I do have another question for you. How bad is a drop of clove oil on a paint glob, to prevent drying out? I resorted to this because I just LOOVVVVEEE the smell of clove oil! ;)

Well, actually I needed to stop the fast drying process during the heat wave here. But now in hindsight I am wondering how much that can affect the adherance effect of the paint.

No turp, radio
 

Enzie,

I do not use the stand oil and turpentine mixture you attribute to me for the purposes of oiling out. If you recall, I used only cold pressed linseed oil, in the workshops you attended, when I oiled out my painting prior to scumbling.

I try my darnedest to avoid turpentine in the studio for toxicity reasons and I even use walnut oil for cleaning brushes so as to avoid the less dangerous (than turps) mineral spirits.

I do, however, add literally one drop of turpentine to one drop of linseed oil and 1/3 of a drop of clove oil to the paint I use to create my wash-in under-painting in the workshop.

What I said at the workshop was that I sometimes may add a very small amount of stand oil, thinned with turpentine, to the linseed oil, if the pure linseed oil beads up over the surface I want to unsink. This very rarely ever happens, by the way.

On another note, nothing good can result from adding clove oil to keep the piles of paint wet. It's my understanding that it can lead to darkening and, if painted over, cracking.

Dear Marvin,

Please accept my appology you are absolutely right! :sunnysmil
I edited the initial post to avoid confusion.

Just as you said, I have been following this for the wash-in as well and strictly Lindseed oil for oiling out between dried painting stages.


Ahh, I hate aging it makes you say and do things that you later wonder about?! LOL

Thanks for the note on Clove Oil, I shall retire it and use it as potpourri!

Enzie, I wasn't absolutely sure if the senior moment was your's or mine.
Take care.

Enzie,

Yes, oil of clove does smell good, but that might be a better reason to use it for perfume or air freshener than to add it to your paints. It does slow the drying, but it does so with consequences to the resulting paint film.

There are better ways to achieve slow drying, if that's what you want, such as eliminating naturally fast-drying paints from your palette. That would mean umbers and siennas, lead whites, and phthalocyanines above all. However, lead white produces the most durable paint films of all oil paints, so I wouldn't want to do without that. I'm able to work with the drying time of lead whites myself, so the trick is not so much to adjust the drying of the paint as it is to waste no time while painting, to get to a stopping point before the paint begins to set up and ceases to be blendable. In other words, an adjustment in technique might be in order if the paint is drying before you've gotten far enough with the painting. One can cover more canvas in a given amount of time with large brushes than with smaller ones, for one consideration. In my opinion, painting faster is better than slowing the drying of the paints with clove oil.

You might try Genesis paints if you like to work wet-into-wet for extended periods of time without worrying about the paint drying. Genesis will not dry until you want it to. It requires heat to make it dry. The kit comes with a heat gun to use for that purpose.

I hope that helps in some way.

Virgil

LOL - Marvin!

Virgil, I purchased Genesis paints many years ago, but unlike Karin Wells, who works successfully with them, I didn't care for the process of baking the painting in order for the paint to dry.

Several years ago some well meaning soul suggested the Clove Oil and for a while I did place a drop on each paint blob. Call it instinct, forgetfulness or being enlightened by the methods of my mentor, I stopped until the heatwave hit Orange County this summer.

Frustrated with the drying out and gooiness of the paints, I reached for the Clove oil again, yet still wondering about it's effects. Well now I know better, thanks to everyone here~ ;)

Enzie,
you can use the walnut oil, that will take care of the slow drying, cleaning the brushes and a pleasant smell.

Oiling out trouble question
 

I have a portrait of a friend which I have been working on a couple of years ago. Last year I decided to repaint some areas and I oiled them out just to help me start again.
Well this year I decided to make that painting really work and I cut it and restretched on a smaller frame, but while I was doing so the areas I painted last year completely peeled off !
I was actually happy as it was where I wanted to rework anyway, so I now sanded it and have a good base to repaint, but I am worried that it could peel again.
Shall I use some retouch varnish to improve adherence ? Did the paint peel off because I oiled out (with linseed oil) a painting that was too old, so completely dry? Also if I use retouch varnish should I only put it down on the area that I intend to work on that day ( the painting is quite large and I am not going to rework the head ) ?
I hope someone can help me before I mess up again!
Ilaria

Hailing as I do from ancient times when common liniments (specifically Dr. Sloan's and Absorbine Jr.) contained turpentine and a spoonful of turps was not an uncommon "cure" for kids with pinworms, it's hard for me to view it in the same light as nuclear waste and DDT. Triple distilled turpentine is used by the cosmetics industry in the production of milady's makeups, powders and nostrums, and by other makers of such things as "pine fresh"cleaning compounds and air fresheners.

Combined with linseed oil in paints, turpentine produces reactions which improve drying and film strength. MS does not. Turpentine is sovereign for compounding various resin varnishes. When MS is substituted, cloudy mixtures result.

All this aside, perhaps issues of "toxicity" which so concern us lately have more to do with the fact that the "turps"commonly available now is not at all good stuff?

"Pure gum spirits of turpentine" is the sap of living conifers tapped for the "turpentine" which is then distilled for the "pure spirits", leaving rosin, colophony and pitch as by-products. Today's hardware/paint store turpentine is a vile liquid produced by crushing stumps, limbs and other forest waste into a mash, then steam-cooking it. Reeking of creosote as it does, it would be well to avoid using this poor-quality, nasty solvent for any purpose. Good turpentine smells like a pine forest after a rainstorm, and it's still available (though costly).

As with all organic solvents, including the various "-oids" and "-sols" and "-tines" marketed just especially for us arteestes (!) citrus oil terpenes and MS, (both "stinky" and odorless) common sense dictates one should not leave open containers of solvent lying about, nor should one swim in it, or ingest it.