Drying time of oil paint.

R

Robie Gardner

Member
This has been a slow process, but I'm finally ready to start painting my decoys. I've sealed with linseed oil and have primed with rustoleum. I'm now ready to start painting with my grumbacher oil paints. A week ago, I painted a scrap piece of wood to experiment with my new tube oils and it still isn't dry. I realize that oil paint takes a long time but what kind of time frame am I looking at when I detail these decoys in my tube oils? If I paint my decoys now, will they be dry enough for this comming season Nov/Dec? I have read in Keith Muellers new book that he doesn't like to use any oil paint medium other than to keep the paint consistancy the same between the colors. I guess I gotta find some place for theses decoys to dry out of the way. Would a hot shed in my back yard be assist in the drying? I appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Robie
 
I like to use a couple drops of a good mineral spirits and a drop of copal medium. This helps dry the paints and it takes a little shine off the paint.
 
Robie, I hope this helps. To answer your question directly, It depends.... First of all I never use the paint directly out of the tube. Use a pallet. This can be a piece of wax paper, A TV dinner plate. A piece of wood painted. Some place to thin and mix your paint. Over the years I have used all kinds. You can buy a pallet if you want but not necessary. I often used a plastic TV dinner plate to put oil paint in. The advantage of this if you have a lot of oil in it and you have to take a break for a day or two. Put some water on top of the oil cover with some sarand wrap and put in a safe place. I have put it in the refrigerator but have had difficultly with the person that rules that room. Now besides the pallet I used a masonite board about 8" by 10" that was painted white or gray on the smooth side with enamel. This I used to test the mixed paint before painting on some thing. This is not necessary but nice.

Now back to drying time... Take the color white, out of the tube I have found it to be stiff and not flow well. So we thin it. Two ways.. One with linseed oil, the other turpentine or other thinner. With just Linseed oil it might take months to dry. With just thinner it maybe a few minutes or too soon. So what do you do... Experiment.. A drop of Linseed oil and some thinner until you find what works for you....

Each color is a little different in the amount of thinning and drying time. Main thing is to experiment and not get frustrated the more you do the more you learn.
 
Robbie,

I've had success using Grumbacher's Cobalt Drier to speed up the drying time of my oil paints. It will "dry" most paint jobs in a day or two (do not confuse this with the time it takes for oil paints to "cure." That can take months.) Use only small amounts of dryer - like 2-3 drops of the stuff when mixing a quarter size amount of paint. You'll need a pallet to mix it on (like Pete said) and some good turps to thin the paint a bit. May be some experts will chime in on the topic- I'm only a beginner but I hang around some good carvers:)

Have fun and experiment!
 
Thanks for the quick replies. Wispete, forgive me if I am confusing. What I ment to say was what kind of time do you expect to allow your decoys to dry with oil paint. I know I need a pallet to mix my paint on. Do most people add some cobalt drier or other medium to their paint, or just use "fat" oil paint which Keith Mueller describes in his new book? Thanks.

Robie
 
I use a couple of drops of cobalt drier and it dries to the touch overnight. The only time I don't use any drier is when I'm trying to blend feathers as in Keith's book (great book by the way) so I have more time to get the look I want and in that case it takes a couple days to dry. It has been my experience that white and the other lighter colors take much longer to dry (week or more) and the darker paints dry faster (couple days). Hope this helps but the best way is to take info from here and test it for yourself but whatever you paint this month you should be able to hunt this fall.

Rich
 
Knowing a little about the particular colors and their make up will help immensely, I may help a little more. Titanium White (TW)i s probably one of the most used colors in all painting. It is also one of the slowest to dry. Titanium is a poor catalyst for curing and its often suspended in clear oils to avoid yellowing. Clear oils dry even slower than linseed oil. Many Tube oil painters will mix TW with Windsor Newton Griffin Alkyd White about 60/40 in a pile on the pallet. Much more than 50/50 and you start to get shine. As you mix other colors, you pull from this pile. Griffin Alkyds are soft and pliable whereas some "Quick dry" whites (like Grumbacher) are like a tube of Beaudreaux's butt paste. If I know I will be using Blacks, I do the same with Black Alkyd. Again, carbon is a bad catalyst. Any color mixed with an alkyd 60/40 to 50/50 should dry overnight, but could be as fast as 6 hours. On an all day paint-a-thon,, never mix more than 4 hours of paint. It will start to get gummy.
Most of your earth tones (colors made from grinding up rocks into pigment) like umbers and siennas, are a catalyst for curing. These I use by themselves with NO driers or alkyds. When mixed with each other and with the white, they will dry in 8-18 hours (Burnt Sienna alone can take longer, but 5% of raw sienna and 5% of burnt umber will kick start it to keep up without losing color).
Gem based colors or synthetic colors need some help if you are trying to keep things moving along. These are your blues, greens, all cadmiums. (Think jewel tone colors). These colors hate to dry or cure. There are two good strategies, Mix with an Alkyd (WN Griffin has all artist colors) or a drier. I only have about 8 alkyd colors, but mostly, they are the cadmiums, a blue and a green. Many of my oil painting friends have nearly all the bright colors. I ususally go 60/40 or less, but any more than 50%, and the shine will start. I love drier, but it can go from cool to crap in about 60 min. I transferred my Grumbacher Cobalt Drier into a dropper bottle. I use 1 drop per 1 inch of tube squeeze. I mix up enough for about 30 min of painting. This is my primary go to for greens and blues. Speculums is a good time to pull this out! If I need less than 1 inch of paint, I squeeze a drop on the side of my pallet, and dip my pallet knife into the drop and mix into the paint. So for a 1/2 inch paint, you use about 1/2 of the drops worth.

I ususally like to paint Saturday and Sunday morning. These techniques with allow me to have a dry decoy on Sunday that I painted on Saturday. Anything painted on Sunday is likely to get no more than 20% alkyds and no cobalts since I have 6 days until I hit it again.
 
Steve,
Thanks for taking to time to clarify some of your painting techniques. I never imagined that there would be so much to painting with oils. I definitely have a lot to learn. I really appreciate the input. This is the only one place that you can get this much help this fast. Thank you.
 
Robie, that question has some variables--a lot depends upon how fat or lean you make the paint, another depends upon the density of the paint-thickness, when applied-less paint, more turps, faster drying, BUT, less adhesion; more paint, slower cure, better adhesion..
There are still paintings in museums well over a hundred years old that are STILL giving curators nightmares, notably Albert Pinkham Ryder's works.
 
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notably Albert Pinkham Ryder's works.
Click to expand...


His paintings, which he often worked on for ten years or more, were built up of layers of paint and varnish applied on top of each other. He would often paint into wet varnish, or apply a layer of fast-drying paint over a layer of slow-drying paint. The result is that paintings by Ryder remain unstable and become much darker over time; they crack readily, do not fully dry even after decades, and sometimes completely disintegrate.


Interesting George.... he must not have had a copy of Keith's book.
 
My pleasure. There is a lifetime's worth of information to learn. Think of the following. Consistancy reduces variation. Reduced Variation reduces headaches. One of the reasons I do not add Terps or Mineral Spirits or other popular additives beyond those I described above is I do not want to alter the thickness or consistancy of the paint. The base layers are all painted the same thickness and consistancy. I want to work with paint that is soft and pliable and almost always full strenth for Hunting Decoys. I also tend to stay with the same brand in order to reduce variation. (Notice a theme?) If you want to put a split or highlight, or other detail, you should thin slightly. This helps it flow off the brush, but it also ensures thinner layers are over the thicker layer. I use Grumbacher 1 medium cuz it keeps things flat.

Once you are feeling comfortable with the paint you are using, then you should vary things which might suit your taste. I have heard of everything from terps, lamp oil, lighter fluid, kerosene, copal, varnish, spirits, xylene, etc. They are all just fine, but wait until you feel comfortable playing with as little variation as possible.

Painting is more like learning to play an instrument than learning how to change out an engine. Given a manual for both, you are more likely to have success with mechanics, but as time passes, the effect of painting will be greatest with time and practice invested. The manual won't provide enough for the result desired.
 
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Thanks, Bob--Just blew water on the floor--better than on the computer, i guess.
Eons ago, on trips to MOMA, i would occasionally move paint around on dekooning's stuff--just a push to see if large pieces of paint had cured. Unreal how long it takes for heavy applications to dry.
Van Gogh's textured stuff was a
lot more durable - well, it had more time to cure!!-I did get yelled at by a guard at the guggenheim when they had a HUGE show of his works there in 1963, i think--still have the catalog!
I would like to refer everyone to INTERACTION OF COLOR, By Joseph Albers--Yale Univ. Press--paperback copies are still available--a great read on color!
Bools are not the solution--experimentation and knowledge of materials often are.
 
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I don't know if Van Gogh is even allowed in the MOMA any more. He had to move down the street to the MMA given his proclivity to actually represent something to the audience. I think only ego/intent based art is allowed in MOMA.
 
have not been to the manzana granda in a number of years---Last time, they had moved everything because they were doing some major overhauling---First visit was when the japanese house was in the sculpture garden-Rats, i have dated myself--that, btw is now in philadelphia, in the park.
 
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