My Top 5 Favorite Oil Painting Supplies
Oil painting is absolutely my favorite medium by a mile and after six years of learning and experimenting I’ve compiled a list of my favorite supplies and tools that are always present in my little studio corner.
I think one of the things that makes oil painting so intimidating to a lot of artists (especially self-taught) is that there are far more supplies involved than a lot of the other painting forms. For most of them you really just need water and you're good to go. You definitely do not need all of the items on this list to be successful in your oil painting practice, in fact you don’t need most of them. An oil painting starter pack would be a different blog post.
This is a list of items that have mostly just made my life easier, helped me avoid a few headaches, and streamlined my work.
Gamsol Odorless Mineral Spirits
A solvent would be on that essential starter pack list. You don’t need this exact one, but solvent is to oil what water is to acrylic.
When I started painting, finding a solvent was incredibly overwhelming. Gamblin came up repeatedly in my research and was used by almost all the painters I followed online, so I decided to give it a try. I was not disappointed and have pretty much stuck with this exact one since. The big thing is that it’s actually odorless. While it’s still important to paint in a ventilated space, we have come a long way from the extremely toxic smelly liquids painters used to be limited to.
Galkyd Medium
After getting a little comfortable with oils, you’d probably be introduced to the world of mixing mediums. These are just other oils and liquids you add to your paint to alter its behavior. Galkyd is my go to. It makes the paint apply more buttery and decreases the drying time significantly. Like SIGNIFICANTLY. We’re talking down to 24hrs for most pigments.
Glass Palette
You know those palettes that have all the little bowls for different colors? Yeah, I hate those.
Completely flat palettes are the only ones I will use and glass ones are the best. Mixing is so much easier on a smooth surface and cleaning dried paint is no sweat with a glass scraper. Before I got myself the linked palette I used an old picture frame and it worked just as well. I only upgraded because the frame broke during a move and I was feeling fancy. I do really like this one though and have been using it for about three years now.
Tube Wringer
It took me a minute to even figure out what this little device is called, but it’s a real game changer. Paint is expensive and I’m getting every last drop with this thing.
Brush Cleaning Jar
This was one of my earliest oil painting purchases and while not a literal painting essential, it’s an essential for me. This nifty little jar is for the solvent mentioned earlier, but it has a metal grate inside you use to clean your brushes. The excess paint that comes off the brush eventually settles to the bottom of the jar and you can separate it from the solvent. I put all the paint sludge into a different jar and use it for toning canvases since it usually ends up a neutral brown color.
Anywho, these are my favorite supplies. Stay tuned for an oil painting starter pack list :)
