Hi Patrick,

I’m still fairly new to WMO myself, I’ve only been using Holbein Duo’s for about half a year on and off for school, but I find them to be the best WMO available. I chose them because an artist I like raved about them, so I got some and tried them. I liked the colours a lot (there’s a huge colour range, last I checked they had 100), and I love how smooth they are right out of the tube. I googled around a bit too and most people who used them think they are the best of the ones they have used. They can be used with almost any other paint too, so that’s cool if you like mixed media approaches.

I’ve only used one other brand and that is W&N Artisan, before trying Holbein Duo, and they are a lot stiffer and thicker, and I found I needed a lot more medium to make them flow. Artisan’s aren’t as smooth and buttery as Duo’s.

I can’t really comment on the glossiness though because I’m still learning about proper paint techniques and proper preparation and what not. I paint on acrylic gesso as my base, and I noticed that my first layer or 2 usually dries matte, like very matte. However I typically use water or Artisan Quick Dry medium to speed up the drying. Then as I start to add fatter mediums/oils it gets glossy.

Right now I’m working on a painting that is super shiny, because I didn’t do any lean layers (still learning), and started with using painting medium right away. On top of that I mixed in silver traditional oil to the WMO oils to make them metallic, so the whole thing is sparkly and shiny. If you want high gloss it’s definitely achievable with the right mediums.

I hope what I said is helpful to you.

Oh and since you’re in Canada, if you are looking to buy Duo’s, you can get them from Opus, Wallacks, Deserres (in store at their Mississauga location), Paintspot, and StudioSix.