On Courses + Tools use code BLACK20
Sara Adrian
Sara Adrian
Columbus Ohio
Works mostly in oils and acrylics as a fine artist, & also moonlights as a freelance illustrator occasionally. Sometimes experiments in other media
Activity Feed
Sara Adrian
I can offer some suggestions to help cut down on solvents. I hardly use straight solvents at all anymore. To clean my brushes. I push out as much paint as I can, and then dip the brush into linseed oil, just dip I don’t swirl it to tap it to get it to release more. Then I push out the pigment again. Doing this a few times until it wipes clean really does the trick. I also use a 50/50 solvent/oil as my main painting medium, so it’s fat but not as fat as pure oil. I find my paintings become pretty much touch dry in a few days more or less. This is the only medium I have been using for my oils, and it’s been working well for me so far. BTW I paint very flat if you’re curious. For solvents gamsol gasses the least, and is considered the most safe but still use good ventilation. Just because you can’t smell it doesn’t mean that you’re not getting gassed. Gamblin’s solvent free medium is pretty much pure fat, I’ve had the same experiences you’ve had. I think you’re safe using liquin, it’s considered to be nontoxic (as nontoxic as any oil paint medium can be anyway). That said, if you want to try something else give M. Graham’s Walnut Alkyd Medium a go. It’s much more fluid than gamblin’s solvent free medium, and it smells nice and is marked nontoxic. I hope this is somehow useful. Nice work. Good luck and congrats!
Liz Gridley
p.s. Loving the M.Graham Walnut Alkyd medium, thankyou again for your help!
Liz Gridley
Super helpful thankyou - the M.Graham medium definetly sounds worth investigating thankyou so much - I know once bub is here I will probably revert to Liquin again and just wash my brushes separate to bubs' spaces in the house - but yeah being pregnant for now just has me extra cautious.
@mondi
hi have you conciderd trying watersoluble oil paints, with them you can use water instead of solvents, i personally use the ones by royal talens there cobra [study variant theres also an artist one with more colors] i really like them but i dont have any comparison with regular oils. Since i never used them and i am still really new to oil paint. I also dont use any medium because they work fine for me without and i dont really understand how i should use them. but there is a painting medium available, i also know that winsor and newton have watersoluble oils but i never tried them. congrats on your pregnancy and i hope my comment helped you out a bit. i do recomment if you concider getting watersolluble oils to check if there save for pregnancy because i dont know for sure.
Sara Adrian
Water soluble oils are not safer than regular oils. You still need to use solvents and mediums that work with that medium, water alone won’t cut it. I used to work in an art supply store and had to get well versed on it specifically for questions like this.
Help!
Browse the FAQs or our more detailed Documentation. If you still need help or to contact us for any reason, drop us a line and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!