Oil Painting - Ingredients

Ingredients

The linseed oil itself comes from the flax seed, a common fiber crop. It is interesting to note that linen, an important "support" for oil painting (see below) also comes from the flax plant. Safflower oil, or the more traditional walnut or poppyseed oil, are sometimes used in formulating lighter colors such as white because it "yellows" less on drying than does linseed oil, but it has the slight drawback of drying more slowly.

Recent advances in chemistry have produced modern water miscible oil paints that can be used with and cleaned up with water. Small alterations in the molecular structure of the oil creates this water miscible property.

A still-newer type of paint, heat-set oils, remain liquid until heated to 265–280 °F (130–138 °C) for about 15 minutes. Since the paint never dries otherwise, cleanup is not needed (except when one wants to use a different color and the same brush). Although not technically true oils (the medium is an unidentified "non-drying synthetic oily liquid, imbedded with a heat sensitive curing agent"), the paintings resemble oil paintings and are usually shown as oil paintings.

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