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 film. Oil paints have been used in England since the 13th century for simple decoration, but were not widely adopted as an artistic medium until the 15th century. Common modern applications of oil paint are in finishing and protection of wood in 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. Thickness of coat has considerable bearing on time required for drying: thin coats of oil paint dry relatively quickly.
History
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. As public preference for realism increased, however, the quick-drying tempera paints became insufficient. Flemish artists combined tempera and oil painting during the 1400s, but by the 1600s easel painting in pure oils was common, using much the same techniques and materials found today.
The oldest known extant oil paintings date from 650 A.D., found in 2008 in caves in Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, "using walnut and poppy seed oils." 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.
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.
In the 13th century, oil was used to detail tempera paintings. In the 14th century, Cennino Cennini presented a painting technique utilizing tempera painting covered by light layers of oil.
Today's technique of oil painting was created circa 1410 by Jan van Eyck. Though van Eyck was not the first to use oil paint, he was the first artist to have produced a siccative oil mixture which could be used to combine mineral pigments. Van Eyck’s mixture may have consisted of piled glass, calcined bones, and mineral pigments boiled in linseed oil until reaching a viscous state. Or he may have simply used Sun-thickened oils (slightly oxidized by Sun exposure). He left no written statement.
Antonello da Messina later improved oil paint: he added litharge, or lead (II) oxide. The new mixture had a honey-like consistency and increased drying properties. 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 darkening of the paint. Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto each may have altered this recipe for their own purposes.
The use of any cooked oils or Litharge (sugar of Lead) will darken an oil painting rapidly. None of the old Masters whose work survives used these in their paintings. Both ingredients became popular in the 19th century.
Since that time, experiments to improve paint and coatings have been conducted with other oils. Modern oil paints are created from bladderpod, ironweed, calendula and sandmat, plants used to increase the resistance or to reduce the drying time.
Paint In Tubes
The paint tube was invented in 1841 and artists were liberated from the studio. Artists no longer needed to grind each pigment by hand and carefully mix the binding oil in the proper proportions. Paints were made in bulk and sold in tin tubes with a cap. The cap could be replaced and the paints preserved for future use. The manufactured paints had a balanced consistency that the artist could thin with turpentine if he chose. No longer bound to the studio, they could work outside in direct sunlight, misty fog, at dawn or twilight.
Paint in tubes also changed the way artists applied paint to the canvas. Painting became much more spontaneous. Artists were no longer obliged to paint in careful layers of thinned pigments and varnish, although they could use that time-tested method if they chose. With paint in tubes, a greater variety of techniques could be employed, such as blending the paint on the canvas and painting directly on the raw, ungessoed surface. The effect of paint in tubes was so important that it contributed to the rise of the impressionist style. The artist Renoir said, “Without tubes of paint, there would have been no impressionism.” Thanks to the mobility that paint in tubes provided, artists could capture the light of a fleeting moment of the day, and the impressions that it provided.
Many modern paint in tubes manufactures have extensive color testing done. The results of this test will tell the artist which paint will last the longest without the colors altering after a period of time. This is important to pay attention to when selecting oil or acrylic paints.
Practical properties of oil paint
Many artists today consider oil painting to be the fundamental art medium; something that a student should learn to appreciate, because of its properties and use in previous, very popular artwork. Typical qualities of oil paint include a long "open time," which means that the paint does not dry quickly. Oil paints take several weeks to dry, this allows the artist to work on a painting for many sessions. Oil paint also has a propensity to blend into surrounding paint allowing very subtle blending of colors. This medium also produced vivid color with a natural sheen and distinct contrast. Oil paints have a surface translucency similar to human skin, making it an ideal medium for portraits.
Carrier
Traditional oil paints require an oil that will gradually harden, forming a stable, impermeable film. Such oils are called siccative, or drying, oils, and are characterized by high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids. One common measure of the siccative property of oils is iodine number, the number of grams of iodine one hundred grams of oil can absorb. Oils with an iodine number greater than 130 are considered drying, those with an iodine number 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.
When exposed to air, oils do not undergo the same evaporative process that water does. Instead, they oxidize into a dry solid. Depending upon the source, this process can be very slow, resulting in paints with an extended drying time.
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 in order to produce refined varieties of oil, which contain fewer impurities, but cold-pressed oils are still the favorite of many artists. 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.
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. Modern oils paints can, therefore, have complex chemical structures; for example, affecting resistance to UV or giving a suede like appearance.
Non-oil carriers
New carriers for paint were developed out of organic polymer technology in the twentieth century. In many cases, such as acrylic paint, a different binder is substituted for oil. These new binders have different properties than oil paint, such as faster drying times and increased mechanical strength of the paint film. They require different (though overlapping) techniques and provide new possibilities that are not available to oil painters, such as the building of heavy texture and impasto, the use of collage, and the sculpting of the paint surface. Contemporary thinking therefore recognizes the new materials as separate media.
Some manufacturers, in an attempt to produce a medium that is oil-based but avoids toxic cleaners and thinners, have managed to produ
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