Studio Products

is a small art mate­ri­als com­pany that makes a vari­ety of high qual­ity art sup­plies. They don’t try to be a one-stop shop, but instead con­cen­trate on the niche of the best, most dif­fi­cult to find stuff. They make a vari­ety of oil paint­ing medi­ums, such as Maroger’s, Roberson’s, copal, wax medium, a glaz­ing medium, and under­paint­ing medium. They also pro­vide mate­ri­als for mak­ing medi­ums, such as oil of spike, Canada bal­sam, clove oil, and black oil. They have a line of oil paint, ground in lin­seed oil, that is at least as good as any other brand I’ve tried. Some of their prices are high, but not unrea­son­able when you con­sider that they are, in fact, using the best mate­ri­als available.

Here are a few of the prod­ucts from their cat­a­log that I’ve tried.

Lead primer in black oil: this is a per­fect lead white primer. It doesn’t dry to a bril­liant white, but rather to a pleas­ant warm tone.

Black oil: This is lin­seed oil cooked with lead. Black oil is slip­pery and dries very quickly; it is an excel­lent com­po­nent in paint­ing mediums.

Glaz­ing medium: Use this by spread­ing a thin layer onto the dried sur­face of your paint­ing, then apply­ing paint thinly into it. Thick and slippery.

Spe­cial aged oil: This is a par­tic­u­lar grade of lin­seed oil, excel­lent for grind­ing your own paint and for mak­ing egg-oil emulsions.

Oil paint: as I said, I have not encoun­tered any­thing bet­ter. It has the kind of con­sis­tency you get with freshly ground, home­made oil paint. It is expen­sive, but note that their stan­dard tube is 50 ml while most of their com­peti­tors use 40 ml tubes, so it’s not quite as costly as it looks.

Oil of spike: This is a sol­vent, sim­i­lar to spir­its of tur­pen­tine. Com­pared to turps, it evap­o­rates more slowly and is more slip­pery. It has a strong, pleas­ant smell.

Maroger’s medium: This is black oil and thick mas­tic var­nish. You can buy a pre-made ver­sion or one that you mix up your­self (it takes 20 min­utes to gel). Added in very small quan­ti­ties to paint, Maroger’s notice­ably improves the han­dling qual­ity of oil paint.

The com­pany also hosts the Cen­nini Forum, a place where paint­ing top­ics are dis­cussed with a knowl­edge­able and lively group of artists. The mod­er­a­tor is Rob Howard, whose some­times acer­bic style of forum man­age­ment does not agree with every­one. If you stick around, you’ll learn lots about paint­ing and paint­ing materials.