I’ve added a page listing suppliers of art materials whose products I like and who provide good service. Call it the All the Strange Hours seal of approval. Over time, I’ll expand the list.
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Here are some providers of art supplies that I’ve found to be especially good. Alas, I get no kickbacks if you buy their stuff.
*Full disclosure: I’ve received free samples from this company (although I’ve also bought stuff from them with my own money).
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Blue Ridge Artist Materials* |
Oil paint |
Natural Pigments |
Lead oil painting ground, bristle brushes, badger brush set, curd soap for brushes, oil paint |
Real Gesso* |
Gesso panels |
Robert Doak and Associates |
Oil paint (especially the blues), walnut oil, rabbitskin glue |
Studio Products |
Oil paint, ugly dog brush soap, glazing medium |
Williamsburg Artist Materials |
Oil paint (especially the earths) |
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I’ve bought some art stuff lately, so I thought I’d post some mini-reviews, of which this is the first. Here is some stuff from Natural Pigments. Alas, I get no kickbacks if you buy this stuff. I also bought some lead white primer, but I haven’t used it yet so you’ll just have to wait.
Badger brush set
Badger hair is traditional for making brushes used for blending oil paint, so I broke down and bought this set from Natural Pigments. There is a fan, a round, and two sizes of flats. So far, I’ve just tried the round, but for blending it is just lovely. I had been doing most blending with a synthetic round, and wow! The badger beats that by a mile. Highly recommended if you paint in a style that involves rendering. I wish I’d bought these a long time ago.
#2 Bristle flat brushes
These were cheap, so I bought a few. The handles are nicely laquered in a natural wood color. The ferules are firmly set and double crimped. The brush hairs are well set (flags facing inward), with the annoyance of a few stray hairs that needed trimming. The brushes hold their shape under heavy use and have the right level of resistance when moving paint. These are an excellent value for inexpensive brushes.
Velazquez medium
This is calcite ground with a blend of bodied and refined linseed oils. I’ve made basically the same stuff myself, but it’s convenient to have some already made up in a jar. It’s light gray and the consistency of oil paint. Mixed with paint it adds no color, but makes it more transparent. This is a good medium for velaturas and for making strongly tinting pigments less strong without losing body. I haven’t noticed that it has much effect on the brushing properties of the paint. They have a similar medium that’s specifically for impasto, but that’s not how I paint. This stuff won’t magically let you paint like Velazquez, but it is useful and inexpensive.
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In the comments to this post, Jeff writes:
What would you recommend as a good source for purchasing canada balsam / stand oil / spike?
First let me note that these are natural materials. Any supplier can get a bad batch. That I got quality stuff five years ago does not guarantee that you will get high quality materials from the same company now. That’s the nature of the market.
That being said, if you want to get Canada balsam, spike, and stand oil, these are suppliers I’d recommend taking a look at:
- Studio Products. I’ve purchased all three of these ingredients from these guys and the quality has been excellent.
- Sinopia. Great pigments and other supplies. They are now the sole distributor for the European art supply company Kremer.
- Natural Pigments. They sell some stuff made by Studio Products and many other art supplies, including a line of oil paints made with some very old-school pigments. They also sell heat-bodied oil in various viscosities. Stand oil is one grade of heat-bodied oil. That would allow you to experiment, if you liked.
- Kama Pigments. They have Canada balsam (at a very good price) as well as oil of spike (which they call lavender oil). I have never ordered from them, but have heard good things from others, despite the truly awful design of their web site.
- Robert Doak and Associates. They have various pre-made mediums, as well as balsam, spike, and stand oil. Don’t let Robert tell you what you have to buy from him.
Note that you should not have to buy a lot of medium supplies, because you should not add much medium to your paint. Unless you are making a lot of paintings, which would be excellent.
Please share any experiences you might have with these suppliers or other places to get these materials.
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This web site seems like a great resource for those who would like to learn to draw with silverpoint (or any other sort of metal-point).
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I am fortunate in having no particular sensitivity to the aromatic solvents such as spirits of turpentine and oil of spike often used in oil painting. I take reasonable precautions while painting to avoid overexposure and ensure good ventilation.
Some people are specifically sensitive to spirits of turpentine, but are able to use alternate solvents such as oil of spike. Others are very sensitive to aromatic solvents, but are able to tolerate modified substances such as odorless mineral spirits. (I don’t like using OMS with oil paints because I don’t like the way they interact with paint. I also have a slight skin sensitivity to mineral spirits.) Note that not all spirits of turpentine are the same. Most modern gum turpentines are made from boiled tree stumps, which makes a nasty-smelling product. Look for stuff that doesn’t have a foul odor.
But there are some individuals who just can’t be around any of the solvents that are useful for oil painting. And even people with no sensitivity may find themselves taking a class or in some other situation in which solvents are not allowed. I think it’s useful, therefore, to discuss strategies for working with oil paint without solvents.
I’d first like to note that, for the first 100 years of oil painting, there is scant evidence of solvent use. Paintings from that period often exhibit very fine detail, demonstrating that just about any sort of painting in oil is possible without solvents. Since those paintings have often lasted very well (without excessive cracking or yellowing), it also demonstrates that multi-layered solvent-free painting can be done without having to dilute the paint with excessive oil or by egregiously violating the principle of fat over lean. Read the rest of this entry »
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So I called up Robert Doak over the Summer to order some paint. As he does, he asked me about how I paint and started suggesting additional things for me to buy (he’s a very good salesman). One of the things he pushed was his new medium, “cristallo.” At $12 USD for a 40 ml tube I decided to splurge and pick some up.
Mr. Doak says that the primary ingredients in cristallo are leaded glass powder and sun-thickened walnut oil. It also contains small amounts of cold-pressed walnut oil, beeswax, and lead drier. It is based on recent research indicating that 16th century Venetian painters added more powdered glass to their paint than was previously thought, although he makes no claim that this is the “rediscovered” medium of Titian, Giorgione, and Tintoretto. He suggests that it is best used by spreading it thinly onto the surface and painting into it. He also suggests that it is a good replacement for varnish on a dried painting, but I am dubious about that application and have not tried it.
I’ve now painted with it, off and on, for a few months. It is a sort of thick, colorless fluid, about the consistency of ketchup. It is not sticky the way mediums containing resins, balsams, or stand oil tend to be. It is easy to spread very thinly onto the painting surface with a finger (you can feel a slight granularity from the glass powder, but it is barely perceptible) and it becomes more fluid as you move it around (i.e., it is somewhat thixotropic). It is nice to paint on, providing a pleasant, slippery quality to the painting surface. Mixed into paint, it dilutes it slightly and gives it extra brushability. It doesn’t hold brush marks. It does not seem to markedly increase or decrease the drying time of oil paint. So far, I like it. It does not make the paint magically transparent or luminous, but I didn’t expect it to.
If you do use cristallo or any other painting medium, add only very small amounts to your paint—never more than 20% of paint volume and preferably much less than that.
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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.
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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.
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If you go into an art or craft store, you can buy pre-stretched canvases and (sometimes) primed panels. You can also buy the stuff they use to prime them, which is usually labelled “gesso.” It’s not actually gesso in the technical sense; it’s really acrylic primer. Acrylic primer is excellent as a ground for acrylic painting. As a ground for oil painting, some people like it, but many find that it’s rough on brushes and “chattery.” By that I mean that paint doesn’t spread very well.
Actual gesso has been used since the Middle Ages as a ground for painting. It’s made from hide glue and an inert white pigment such as chalk or gypsum (it may also have a stronger white pigment such as titanium white added for brightness). Traditional gesso is a good alternative to acrylic primer if you are painting on panels (it’s too brittle for use on canvas). You can make it yourself, but if you’d rather not go through the trouble, the best commercial gesso panels I know of are made by these guys:
Their panels are excellent for oil, egg tempera, or tempera grassa. They are made with 1/4” tempered hardboard spray-coated with gesso made from hide glue, powdered chalk, and titanium white. A 16 × 20” panel currently costs $20.80 USD, which is quite reasonable. They sell a variety of sizes and will custom cut for no additional fee. Smaller “plein air” panels on thinner hardboard are also available, as well as oil-primed linen glued to hardboard.
They will send you a sample for free if you ask. If you’ve been painting on generic primed canvas or making your own supports with acrylic primer, this is a real step up.
In a later post, I’ll provide instructions for making your own gesso panels.
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runs an art materials store in Brooklyn, NY. He is an interesting old guy with very strong opinions about how paintings should be made. If you are an artist, his shop is full of needful things. If you call him or walk into his store, you won’t be able to escape having a very long conversation about art, in which he tries to figure out what kind of painter you are so that he can recommend what you should buy from him. He is something to experience, although you should by no means treat all of his opinions as gospel.
He makes oil paint. It is, unlike any other brand that I am aware of, ground in a blend of linseed and walnut oil. The paint is really good stuff, highly pigmented and very fluid. No one makes better blues than Robert Doak. It is amazingly inexpensive for top of the line paint. The paints are made to maximize quality rather than shelf life, so they often separate in the tube. That’s OK; just squeeze the paint out onto absorbent paper, wait a minute or so for the extra oil to settle out, and transfer to your palette with a knife. It’s worth the trouble.
Robert has no web site; he only recently began accepting credit cards (before that, mail order was done by check, and if he’d done business with you before, he’d mail out your order on the strength of your promise). Robert Doak & Associates, Inc., can be reached at 89 Bridge St., Brooklyn, NY 11201, or by phone at (718) 237-1210. Call before stopping in, as he’s not there every day. If you are a painter in oil, watercolor, tempera, pastel, or any other traditional medium, you owe it to yourself to get in touch with him. When he goes, there won’t be any more.
Updated information on Robert Doak’s paint here.
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