Get yourself a muller and slab. Your paint making experience will be very different.

I am a little new at making paint from pigments, but have mixed up a fair amount so far. Before I go further and order more pigments, I was wondering if I could get some advice?
I’ve tried pigment from several sources: Kremer, Maimeri, Natural Pigments and an unknown older source. All are quite gritty, even after mixing with a metal plaster’s knive on frosted glass surface. They work, but the handling and matte surface effect are not exactly what I want, at least not all the time.
I also have a mortar and pestle around 700ml volume, which I found all but useless for grinding/mixing a fair amound of paint.
I admire manufactured paint and enjoy the consistency of the better ones like Old Holland and Mussini, but don’t know if this is possible with handmade paint. I know the next step is to get a glass muller and start grinding to finer particle size.
To complicate things, effort-wise, I like to make batches of a single pigment of at least 100ml at a time, and tube it up in appropriate sizes, usually a couple 40ml and a 15ml from a session.
Is it possible to rival the smoothness of manufactured paint?
How long should I expect to grind 100ml to come up with satisfactory results?
Is there an easier, faster way to grind down the pigment to finer, more consistent particles?
Thanks, Jim

Jim,

There is more to it than simply adding oil to a pile of pigment, and mixing it up. What results in siimply mixing like that is a paste. Turlogh’s advice is very good. I personally don’t mix up a great deal of paint at one time. Maybe the amount of an unshelled peanut at max. It has taken me up to an hour and a half to mull that amount to the point where I am satisfied.

Short of making a paste, when making paint, one is truly shooting for the full encapsulation of each and every particle of pigment, in an oil binder. This takes time. When not done properly, the “paint may be lumpy, and at the microscopic level if each particle isn’t encapsulated in oil, and parts remain without proper binder, the resulting work is prone to severe cracking over time. When you go to the museum, and see old paintings that are cracked very badly, in addition to the atmospheric effects on improperly prepared supposts, as well as issues pertaining to premature varnishing, this is another cause of the damage that art work incurs. If the pigment you are using is from the sources that you have mentioned, the grittiness is most likely due to particles that are not fully encased in oil, and are stuck together, you can’t see it with your eye, but it gives itself away in the crunch on your slab.

The paint that I make is rather juicy, but so much more highly pigmented than my best store bought paint, that it has led me to really wonder what the manufacturers are putting in there. My paint is so vibrant, that the whites especially, almost appear to create their own light. Like I said however, they remain juicy, so I do not use them impasto. Rather, I apply them with soft sable brushes.

If you are attemptingto rival the working characteristics of commercial paint, you will need to add some extras, such as wax, but I would make sure that the paint was fully mulled, prior to the addition of any other mediums.

Remember, it takes patience, and time. If you take your time, and do it right, and mull in an almost meditative manner, you won’t be disappointed.

Jim

Yeah, one word: mulling.

Definitely necessary to get the best encapsulation, which will give the longest-lasting paint (both liquid and after use).

Einion

I have found in making the above pigments into paint… that all these pigments include some large particles, and the average size is larger than I want.They also dry to a gritty matte finish. I can see how large some of the particles are when I am mixing — they leave streaks in the smoother paint.

Just to clarify something, you’re not grinding pigment particles down to a smaller size really. You’re breaking up agglomerations – little clumps – modern pigments are made to a generally smaller, and more uniform, particle size than in the past.

I know this sort of sounds like an arbitrary distinction but it’s important to understand the difference – you wouldn’t be able, by hand, to reduce some pigments to a smaller particle size because of the hardness of the minerals and the effort involved, but you should be able to break down agglomerations with relative ease.

It seems a muller might work, but I don’t want to spend four hours to make 100ml of paint!

Seriously, it might take nearly that long. In fresco for example each batch of some natural earths might be mulled for hours (hence the looooong line of people waiting for a fresco apprenticeships :D). That’s generally considered excessive for paint but some pigments will require longer mulling to achieve the same consistency that comes easily to another (in part because of the solidity of their agglomerations).

Any idea where would a person might find a very small 3-roller mill with adjustments? And at what sort of cost?

The cost will be thousands new. I have heard you can get lower-cost ones for less although they really do need to be made with precision, so it might be a false economy. Ask George or another contact that makes paint commecially, they should be able to direct you if you have the budget.

Einion

Gunzorro, if you need large quantities of high quality paints at reasonable prices, have you every tried Classic Artist Oils by the Triangle Corporation? (Not to be confused with Classico by Maimeri) They have some wonderful earth colors; their Venetian Red is my favorite brand in that color, and they sell in 4 oz tubes up to caulking-gun-size tubes and quart cans. I like their yellow ochre a lot too, and also the trans red oxide, buff titanium, and others. They will likely be willing to send you samples of colors you’re interested in if you give them a call. They have their white sale running now, and they send a free tube of white with every order (my favorite white). Here’s a link for you to their website. They only sell direct to the artist, not through retailers (hence the lower prices):
http://www.artistoils.com/htmls/default.asp

Jamie