I’m not familiar with the Weber WMOs and really haven’t seen many comments about them. I would recommend the Cobra brand or Holbein – their consistency (at least to me) is not as stiff as some other brands. Each brand is somewhat different.

I would seriously stop reading comments (this thread aside) on the internet. Their is no place with more misinformation and contradictory comments than the internet! You just have to try it out for yourself to learn what works and what doesn’t. I have always thinned with water with the Cobras with no issues. The one brand that I know had problems thinning with water was W&N Artisan. They eventually developed a thinner to use with their WMOs. Thinning with water is NOT the same as thinning with water when using acrylics or watercolor. You can’t thin the paint to a wash consistency. I rinse my brushes while painting with water. To thin the paint, I just dip my brush into the water jar and then go to my paint pile. Most folks will use a medium with oil to thin the paint, especially after the initial layer, and as you mention, most brands will sell their own mediums. You can also use 100% oil (linseed, walnut or safflower are sold by many WMO brands as well) to thin the paint, but it must be used sparingly. Using 100% oil is the easiest way to avoid solvents.

To clean your brushes after painting, you definitely don’t need any solvent – just soap and water. Over the years, I have found that Masters Brush cleaner as the best soap to use. Sometimes brushes seem dirty when they are not as some pigments will stain the brush. That stain will remain, but the brush will still be clean.

Good luck!

Don

For underlayers you can try acrylic. Dilute this acrylic with water. Use oil paint diluted with linseed oil medium to paint over.

The rules of water mixable oil painting are:

1. Use a jar of water to clean the brushes while you are painting
2. Clean brushes afterwards with dish detergent or soap and water.
3. Never add just a little bit of water to oil paints. Only use the water-mixable linseed oil that the manufacturer of the paints sells to thin paints. (But it’s OK to use a lot of water to do a wash or to paint an underlayer of thin color.)
4. Water-mixable fast-drying mediums suck, so don’t bother.
5. After you immerse a hog bristle brush into water, that brush sucks until all of the water dries. So either keep a bunch of hog bristles on hand because you can’t clean them while you’re painting, or learn to like synthetic brushes.

That’s it.

Also, the only brands I can comment on are that Holben Duo are great and the W&N Artisan suck in comparison. That’s all I know about brands. The Weber paints could be fine, or not, I don’t know. (Although based on the color swatch photos at the Blick website, they look like student-quality paints, which would explain why the price is so cheap.)

As far as walnut oil goes: NO NO NO NO!!!!! That’s a regular oil that will make your water-mixable oil paints no longer water-mixable. It’s just plain stupid. Who is dishing out such stupid and wrong advice?

The rules of water mixable oil painting are:

1. Use a jar of water to clean the brushes while you are painting
2. Clean brushes afterwards with dish detergent or soap and water.
3. Never add just a little bit of water to oil paints. Only use the water-mixable linseed oil that the manufacturer of the paints sells to thin paints. (But it’s OK to use a lot of water to do a wash or to paint an underlayer of thin color.)
4. Water-mixable fast-drying mediums suck, so don’t bother.
5. After you immerse a hog bristle brush into water, that brush sucks until all of the water dries. So either keep a bunch of hog bristles on hand because you can’t clean them while you’re painting, or learn to like synthetic brushes.

That’s it.

Also, the only brands I can comment on are that Holben Duo are great and the W&N Artisan suck in comparison. That’s all I know about brands. The Weber paints could be fine, or not, I don’t know. (Although based on the color swatch photos at the Blick website, they look like student-quality paints, which would explain why the price is so cheap.)

As far as walnut oil goes: NO NO NO NO!!!!! That’s a regular oil that will make your water-mixable oil paints no longer water-mixable. It’s just plain stupid. Who is dishing out such stupid and wrong advice?

You can use a non WMO medium (such as non-WMO Walnut oil, Linseed oil, etc.) and even traditional oils mixed in with your WMOs. While I am not sure about all brands, many brands say you can mix traditional oil materials with WMOs as long as your amount of traditional is less than about 25-30% compared to the amount of WMOs.

The reason that folks are dishing out “such stupid and wrong advice” is that they have used walnut oil or other non-WMO materials with great success and with no problems. I am currently using Gamblin’s Solvent free gel with my WMOs with no problems whatsoever. Yes, it does make it harder to clean the brushes, but they still clean up with Master’s Brush cleaner and water. If you are using a non-WMO material, keep the amount small. Folks who use these non-WMO mediums or paints are not also mixing with water.

As for “Rule” no. 3 – Just wondering why you would have trouble adding a little bit of water, but have no problem with a lot of water? A small amount of additive (whatever you are adding to your paint) is always recommended rather than a lot. The only time it is OK to add enough solvent (water, in this case) is in an initial wash. An initial wash becomes absorbed into the ground and is not really an independent paint layer. Otherwise, it is never advisable (although, yes, folks do it) to thin your paint to a wash-like consistency with a solvent as you risk under-binding the paint.

Don

Don is correct, I have also used regular walnut oil too, and linseed, without any water solubility issues, only using an excessive amount will reduce solubility.
The reason I used walnut is because it worked so darn good.

I have played around shortly with WMOs, Cobra brand, so I have very little experience. But for what it’s worth, I also did not like them much. I found them too stiff, not as easy to thin as acrylics, and harder to spread over the canvas. Also, the paints tended to become tacky on the palette and on the canvas.

Overall, I simply find acrylics more fluid and much more pleasant to use.

Yes, Oil paints are thicker, stickier and considerably different than acrylics. WMO oils are still oil paints and have really no similarities to acrylics – aside from the ability to use water with them. Cobras, in my opinion, are actually one of the thinner brands. Most are even thicker from the tube, although the differences are minor in comparison the the variation in different types of acrylics.

Don