Update on Robert Doak

I wrote about Robert Doak’s oil paints back in July, when I first started this web log. Today, he called me. He had noticed my post here, looked up my phone num­ber on his cus­tomer list, and wanted to thank me for rec­om­mend­ing his prod­ucts. He also asked about my state­ment that some of his paints sep­a­rate, so that a oil oozes out of the tube when you remove the cap (I’ve only had this hap­pen with a small per­cent­age of his paint tubes).

He said that he almost never gets this com­plaint. He wanted me to know that, when it hap­pens, it does so because he uses very lit­tle stearate, which is a clear, inex­pen­sive pig­ment that paint man­u­fac­tur­ers use to pre­vent sep­a­ra­tion. It also reduces pig­ment load and (when used in excess) makes paints more thick and dif­fi­cult to work with. Cheaper brands of oil paint use a lot of stearate, to improve shelf life and reduce the per­cent­age of expen­sive pig­ments in their paint (that’s part of why stu­dent grade paint is usu­ally very stiff). I have never been con­cerned about sep­a­ra­tion with Doak’s paint, because I know it hap­pens because he empha­sizes pig­ment load and smooth han­dling over shelf life.

In the orig­i­nal post I said that the way to deal with sep­a­ra­tion was to squeeze your paint out onto absorbent paper, wait a cou­ple of min­utes, then trans­fer the paint to your palette with a knife. Mr. Doak said doing that over and over might tend to leech the oil out of the paint tube and cause the paint in the tube to harden (I haven’t had that hap­pen). He rec­om­mended instead stor­ing any tube of paint with sep­a­ra­tion issues cap down­ward, so the oil moves back up through the pig­ment in the tube. I told him I’d try that and pass on the tip.

I still strongly rec­om­mend his paint.