Water Soluble Oils

Water-soluble oils go by several names:

• water-soluble
• water-thin able
• water-mixable
• water-miscible

Each means the same.

These are oil paints made just like regular oils by finely grinding up pigments into a vegetable drying oil.

The difference is, the linseed oil or other vegetable oil used has been modified to be water soluble. This means you can clean up your brushes and your hands with soap and water just like you would with acrylics.

The manufacturers also say that you can mix these with water to change their consistency.

There in Lies the Controversy About How Well These Mimic the Regular Oils.

When you add a little linseed oil or turpenoid to regular oils to make them more spreadable, you accomplish just what you want.

When you add a little water mixable linseed oil, some brands give you the same smell that you get from regular oils, which bothers my breathing, but the paints are more spreadable. I have found a solution to that by using walnut oil instead of the water mixable linseed oil and will discuss it shortly

.Depending on the brand, some paints are stiffer than others so you have to try different brands or different mixtures to get them to where you want. I will discuss different brands later in this article as it progresses.

When you try to thin the water-soluble oils with water as the manufacturers suggest, if you only add a little bit, it gets very sticking and won't spread...and boy, is that frustrating.

If you add a lot of water to make it a wash, it works very well.

My problem with the water-soluble oils when I first started with them was when I would try to do skies and water. I had been very spoiled with the Bob Ross oil paints I had been using, and how easily you can do skies and water reflections.

This is one of my oil paintings and you can see that there is extensive sky and water work.

Using the regular oils made the sky go very quickly and the water reflections easily attainable.

This is a painting I am working on right now using water-soluble oils.

The sky and water reflections are blending very easily without using water or water-mixable linseed oil and I'm washing up with soap and water. Read on for...

The Solution

I met a women from Canada on FaceBook and she told me that she mixes walnut oil into her water soluble oil paints with great result. She focuses many of her painting on the wide expanse of skies in the prairies of central Canada. To view some of her wonderful paintings go to nclacey.com

The walnut oil has no smell to it and the paints go on the canvas as smoothly as with regular oil paints.

The best part, is that I just clean up with soap and water and there is no gumminess or strong odors in the process. I'm painting with water soluble oils with all the wonderful properties I love about oils without any of the negatives of messy cleanups and fumes.

The water soluble oil paints still dry very slowing, but there is a water mixable oil fast drying medium that you can add to them if you need to.

My preference is walnut alkyd.

It is walnut oil with a fast drying additive in it. It does bother my breathing if I work with it too many days inside. I try to use it outside as much as possible and allow it to dry in a room where I do not go into very often.

You will have to see how you respond to it, yourself.

Walnut Alkyd

When you want the water soluble oils to dry faster, you can use a quick-drying medium which is available with many individual brands. I choose to use walnut alkyd since I use walnut oil exclusively.

The following is a painting where I used M. Graham's walnut alkyd. It enabled me to do multiple glazes over different areas of the painting in a relatively short time.

Normally the paints were touch dry within 24 hours so the next glaze level could be added. Without the alkyd, glazes would have been about 5 days apart.

Because I have so many allergies, I found that the alkyd did bother my breathing. To reduce this problems, I was able to do the glazing outside or in a very well ventilated area. I also made sure that the layers dried in a place where I do not stay for any length of time.