In the summer of 2003, Mark Orwell began his career as a freelance writer focusing on popular culture, music, and film. He continues to write on a broad array of topics from Miami, Florida. His work has been available in the United States, the Caribbean, and South Africa.
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Art SuppliesOverview
There are many different kinds of paints out there, each one lending unique properties to what it helps produce. Oil paint is one of the oldest and most widely used of these. Whether it is used in fine art or in painting a home, oil paint is unique for many reasons, making it the prime choice for many types of paint jobs.
History
The earliest known use of oil paint is around 650 AD in caves in Afghanistan. It was a simple piece of work, but it showed how long oils have been used in this way. In the 12th and 13th century, oil paint was used for domestic purposes and was being experimented with by artists. The modern use of this paint in fine art was developed around 1410. And in the subsequent century many famous artists, such as Leonardo DaVinci, experimented with types of oils and the creation of oil paints to come up with the paints that can be purchased today.
Features
The most important feature of oil paint is the time it takes to dry. When compared to acrylic paint, watercolors and other paint types, oil paint dries more quickly. It all depends on how thick the layer of paint is. Other features of oil paint depend on what they are made of, as a number of natural oils can be used to create paints that are thicker, shinier, or have various shades of a certain color.
Benefits
The unique composition of oil paints is beneficial to many artists. This gives them more time when working on a piece to blend colors together and the perfect arrangement of brush strokes in the piece. If something is painted and needs to be changed later on, an artist can do so because it will not have dried so quickly. Other paints leave room for permanent artistic errors because they dry so quickly.
Pigments
The oil used to make paints, as well as the nutrients found in them, have an effect on the pigment of the oil paint in question. Cadmium, a non toxic additive to oil paints, gives off rich red and yellow colors. Zinc is also used, and in older paints lead is used to create a white pigment. Earthy pigments are also used to create very natural colors. These include sienna or umber.
Warning
Oil paints are not the safest because of the pigments used in them. Older paints were almost all toxic, while today only certain pigments are. Any white oil paint that uses a metal pigment, such as lead or zinc, have a high level of toxicity. Certain pigments, such as emerald green, were actually so toxic that they were pulled from use entirely. Look out for warning levels that can hint to the toxicity of a specific color of oil paint.
