I’m going to be honest. I suck at writing. My wife is a fantastic writer but I’m terrible. I know why I’m terrible at it. Because I don’t like doing it. Not as much as I hate math but I don’t like it. So I’m bad at it because I don’t do it often. For this blog post I’m going to be lazy and just paste in all the notes I’ve taken for this painting. It’s a lot of “writing” but It’s not something I feel is cohesive. Instead, it’s purely informative.
Side note: The ultimate reason why we suck at anything is because we don’t do it consistently. Same is true for art, music, basketball, anything.
Dec 28 2025
Today is the drawing phase of this painting but I’m super excited because I got a set of water mixable oil for Christmas and I can’t wait to start painting with them.
I plan on doing many sessions and paintings with them to learn how they work really well.
I’m not going to use any medium with them, just straight paint to start out with.
Eventually I may invest in some water mixable mediums.
I’m going to use different brushes than what I’ve been using with my oils as well.
I don’t want to cross contaminate and have to wonder which brushes I should clean with oil and which I should clean with water.
I’ve got my can of water ready to go!
For this New Hunter I want to keep it bright! Also Super high saturation. Plus Expressive brushwork And Thick paint.
I’m influenced by Chris Long the amazing landscape painter and how bright, expressive, high contrast and high saturation his paintings are with super thick paint as well.
Mainly I’m doing this because I looked back at my latest work and they are getting way too dark and moody. I want to lighten things up. Literally.
Dec 30 2025
Today I’m starting with the water mixable oils.
The first thing I want to try is watering down the oils and doing an initial wash over this painting and see how more paint piles on top of it.
I can’t find any official windsor newton information on these paints which is odd but I’ve read several artists accounts of these paints and it seems you can put quite a bit of water into them and they still hold up.
This is something that I cannot do well without solvents on traditional oil paint.
This whole youtube video I’m going to be talking over the time lapse of me painting because I want to give you my opinion on my initial thoughts first and foremost.
I’ll be focusing on…
- Working properties.
- How the paint moves with different brushes and different levels of water mixed in.
- I heard they can get sticky. I’ll see if I can cause that to happen.
- Colors
- Can they stay saturated and do they get to gray quickly?
- How the colors mix. Is there one color that is more like a dye than a color?
- Do they stay on a vertical palette?
- An any other things I come up with during the painting process.
Notes while working
- The binder has separated from the paint and on the initial squeeze I get a lot of that extra liquid.
- There’s a bit of smell to the paint as well, but not as bad as the griffin paints. But I’m super sensitive to smells. This must have been a fluke because I didn’t smell anything later.
- Watering down the initial layer works really well, but it’s still difficult to cover raw paper even with very fluid paint.
- For one of my future paintings using these water mixable oils I wanna try a different smoother surface to see how they move.
- One source says that we should avoid oil primed surfaces because these paints will not adhere correctly and bead up.
- Like with traditional oils the connection between the surface and these paints is going to be very important in order to get them to work really well. I find that I have to constantly dip into water to get them to move around on the raw paper. But I’m certain that with a smooth, non-absorbent surface that these paints will move around really well.
- The more water I add, I do get a slight value shift. The initial stroke goes on light and then dries a little bit darker.
- It’s super nice to be able to clean out a brush completely and easily with water and continually use it with a different color. It’s not essential. I can use multiple brushes, but it’s nice to have the option.
- Ultramarine right out the tube is very sticky and difficult to move around with a soft brush even on the pallet. By adding a little bit of water to it, it removes that stickiness right away.
- Because I’m working on a vertical pallet, I find it easier to mix up a color on my pallet with paint right out of the tube, then dip my brush and water before putting it on the painting. This prevents the paint on the pallet from running down and allows me to put very wet paint on the paper.
- But this issue is only because I’m intentionally trying to water down the paint a ton for this initial layer.
- I’m using a cadmium red hue and its tinting strength is very low.
- Except with the lemon yellow that I’m using. The lemon yellow has an even lower tinting strength.
- Because of that, I have to be very mindful of transitioning to a very bright yellow or orange because any tiny bit of paint left in my brush is going to affect the saturation of that color tremendously.
- Because I’m able to water this paint down a lot I’m able to put very thin washes over my drawing and see the drawing underneath which is super nice.
- I’m certain that if I sealed my drawing with a clear acrylic medium that this would work even better. I’ll have to try that in the future as well.
- The titanium white has very strong tinting strength, which is great because I don’t have to use that much of it and I can keep the colors very pure and saturated.
- Once the paint dries a little bit on the pallet, it gets very sticky, which is not so nice.
- That only takes a few minutes.
- I’ve painted with acrylic and gouache before and a lot of what I’m doing. Here is reminding me of acrylic and gouache, but without all the drawbacks of acrylic and gouache. There is a very slight value change, but the more I paint the less noticeable it is. With acrylic and gouache there is a much larger value change.
- Like acrylic and gouache the paint is drying fast on the palette, but not too fast. I don’t feel the need to use a stay wet palette. I still have all kinds of time to work the paint that is already on the paper.
- My current impression is that these paints take the best of both worlds acrylic and oil and combine them.
- Because I’m adding so much water to the paints on this initial layer, the paper is beginning to bow a lot of course this probably would not be an issue with canvas. Or even if I gessoed the paper before painting.
- One thing I like to do with oil paint on the initial layer is go back into the paint and soften everything and fill in the interstices. With oil paint you can do that pretty easily, even with a thin initial layer, but I found that with these paints, I must add a bit of water to my brush and kind of reactivate the paint that’s on the paper and move it around. It’s different but still good. It provides some different effects.
- I’m certain that if I used solvents like I’m using water here for traditional oil paints that the same would be true. But solvents are bad, so I’m not doing that ever.
- So far I really like these paints.
- Because they’re a different medium they need to be treated differently and I don’t find that being an issue at all. It’s the same as if you would switch to acrylic or gouache you would have to make changes to brushes, surface, mediums, and the way that you apply everything.
- It was also really fun to deal with a split primary pallet again. It’s been a long time since I’ve had this many colors to deal with, but it’s also nice to be able to reach super high saturated colors as well as very neutral grays.
- I cannot wait to see what the surface is like tomorrow. I am wondering if this will dry completely within 24 hours and even how the piles of paint will last on my pallet.
- There is a tremendous amount of learning for these paints, but I think it could lead to something wonderful!
Dec 31 2025
Start out with seeing how much the paint has dried in 24 hours
Recap yesterday’s video in bullet points
- This is a different medium. No different than if I changed to gouache or acrylic so all my other materials have to adjust to accommodate it. Even changing to different traditional oil paint manufacturers needs some adjustments in process. Understanding that is essential.
- If you go into these paints thinking that you will get the same exact working properties as traditional oils you will be disappointed.
- I normally like working without any medium but these paints and the initial raw paper surface need water at least. Testing other mediums may open these paints up into wonderful possibilities.
- Be mindful of stickiness. Adding more water helps.
- Getting that super thin wash at the beginning with water and not solvent is fantastic.
- I’ve already gotten my traditional oil painting process to use no solvents and clean up with soap and water. So the selling point of cleaning up on these paints is not helpful for me.
- If it’s important for you to clean out your brush between every mixture and you can’t use solvents these paints are fantastic. I use multiple brushes but now I have the option to clean one brush all the time.
I’ll eventually compile all my findings into one video for these paints I’m sure but its going to take several paintings to really understand these paints.
