Water Mixable Oil Paints Reviews

Make your favourite oil colour into a water-mixable oil colour
with Schmincke Medium W

The most toxic thing about oil painting is the solvent. If you have excellent ventilation, with air constantly drawn out of your workspace so that you never smell your solvent, you might not need to worry too much, but that sort of ventilation is rare. For the rest of us who wish to paint safely with oils there are two options: using low-odour solvent or water-mixable oil paints. The advantage of water-mixable oil colour is not only do you use no solvent, but clean up is much easier with just soap and water and who doesn't want to spend less time scrubbing brushes.

Until now you had only a few makes of water-mixable oil colour to choose from. With Schmincke Medium W you can turn your trusted favourite oil colour into a solvent-free oil. It is compatible with any artist oil colour. Once dry, a painting created with water-mixable oils is just like any other oil painting and should be treated as such.

Schmincke Medium W is available in 60ml, 200ml bottles.

Schmincke Medium W

Schmincke Medium W is a low-odour medium that will turn any oil colour into a water-mixable oil colour

Schmincke Medium W is useful for artists who:

• have allergic reactions to solvents
• work at home in small rooms or apartments and who want to prevent the smell of solvents
• work in poorly ventilated studio spaces
• don't want to make compromises on the oil colour they trust and use, but want to remove solvents from their workspace
• want an alternative to the available water-mixable oil colours

Using Schmincke Medium W with your oil colour

Schmincke Medium W

What you will need: Your favourite oil colour, Schmincke Medium W, a brush and water.

Schmincke Mussini

Schmincke Mussini Oil Colour is a resin-based oil paint available in 35ml and 150ml tubes.
It is one of my favourite oil colours because of its luminosity.

Schmincke Medium W

Squeeze your favourite oil colour out onto your palette.

Schmincke Medium W

Shake the Medium W briefly before use and here we used a pipette for easy application.

Schmincke Medium W

Add half as much Schmincke Medium W so you have a ratio of one part Medium W with two parts oil paint on your palette.

Schmincke Medium W

Mix on your palette until the colour and medium are combined.

Schmincke Medium W

Paint onto your canvas as you normally would.

Schmincke Medium W

Rinse your brushes in water!

Beside being able to wash up in water a few things will be different:

your paint will become more quick drying and the drying times of all the colours will even out, will be more similar to each other
there is a colour shift from wet to dry- the medium plus water creates a milky colour that will lighten the paint colour while wet, some colours more than others, but it will dry back to the original colour. This might be a challenge for some people but many acrylic artists have successfully dealt with colour shift from wet to dry for years.
I find painting with water-mixable oils a whole new painting experience, you can still blend but it feels different, something like a cross between oil painting and watercolour painting so you may need to experiment with a few new techniques.
Schmincke Medium W increases the gloss and transparency of oil paint

Schmincke Medium W is available in 60ml, 200ml bottles.

Click on the underlined link to go to the current offers on the oil mediums Schmincke Medium W on the Jackson's Art Supplies website.
Postage on orders shipped standard to mainland UK addresses is free for orders of £39.

Julie was the editor of the Jackson's Art Blog for 10 years and now writes for the blog part time. With an encyclopaedic knowledge of art materials (majoring in oils and acrylics), she loves researching and writing pieces for the blog as she learns something new each time. Julie is also a professional artist who studied on the Turps Studio Painting Programme and Camberwell College of Art.