Oil paint just won’t do what you’re asking for. I’d look into watercolor, acrylic, or egg tempera.

I notice your link isn’t working.

Golden makes a an"acrylic glazing liquid" that both retards drying time and also allows for easier blending of acrylic paint. It would be, I think, worth a try for your models.

I love both acrylic and oils, but for models, I would use acrylic.

If you want lots of colours, just buy one of Reeves 24 colour sets, a bottle of Golden glazing liquid, and have fun for less than $30. The paint works well, and the glaze will give you about double to eight times the drying time dending on how much you add and how thick the layers are. It makes the paint look milky when wet, but this resolves after it dries.

Finish it with Krylon Kamar varnish, and it should last for decades and look professional as well.

Good question. If I were a perfect guardian of the environment, I would do a better job with this. What I do is limit the amount of toxic materials that I contribute to groundwater, etc. to very, very small quantities.

In most communities in the U.S., there is a public works department that will periodically accept contaminants. Mostly that's stuff like used engine oil from people who change the oil on their cars, but it also includes toxic art materials. So I save rags and paint cleaned from my palette. Periodically I make sure they go to the right place. I actually produce very little in the way of waste materials, in part because I am kind of stingy—avoiding squeezing out much more paint than I'm going to use, for example.

The lack of noxious smelling off-gassing (and deleterious) vapors is key to continued painting here. If using just linseed oil as a “solvent” in the lean-to-fat progress of a painting will do the trick IF the initial layerings dry quickly and IF those little changes here and there, later on, also dry quickly…and if we have zero off-gassing, then I’d be very pleased.

The question that comes to mind, however, is: Which linseed oil (and why only linseed vs. safflower or other oils? I suspect that Louis V. has an interest in a proprietary product, while I’m interested in something I can pick up reasonably and regionally via mail order. Looking in NYCentral’s catalog (2005) I see that 2 linseed oils are noted for quick drying: a) Sun-Thickened and b) Thickened where the key words are “accelerates drying time.”

I like to add that brush cleaning is also an issue. Do you clean brushes with linseed oil and soap? Safflower oil and soap?

Thanks for the informative and energizing website.