Although liquin has always been a popular option for an oil paint medium, the recent surge in people trying their hand at oil painting has resulted in a large number of different people reaching out with questions about using liquin for oil painting. Due to this, we have decided to publish this article answering the various questions that we receive to try and help as many of our readers as possible get to grips with liquin and use it for their oil painting.
Now, to be clear, throughout this article we are referring to a high-quality liquin product. Although there are a handful of brands that make a solid liquin product that is worth using with your oil paints, there are also a number of low-quality products out there that tend not to perform well. Provided you stick to the reputable brands for your liquin such as Windsor & Newton you should be fine and get solid results from your oil painting.
Additionally, liquin is available in five different thicknesses as well as with a number of effects offering different outcomes for your artwork. Again, provided you stick with a reputable brand for your liquin, it really doesn’t matter what actual liquin product you go with but throughout the article, we will be trying to stick to the regular medium thickness liquin but you can adjust for a thinner or thicker product as required.
Is Liquin Oil Good For Oil Painting?
Although there are a number of liquin alternatives on the market, we do feel that liquin does remain a reliable favorite with the arts and crafts community due to its great performance with oil paint on canvas, paper, and various other mediums. Liquin is usually used as a semi-gloss medium for general purpose oil based artwork with many people taking advantage of its fast drying time.
Just like many of the other popular paint mediums on the market, liquin resists yellowing with age where as some of the other mediums can start to develop their yellow tint in as little as one year. This helps to score liquin points over some of the other mediums, especially for high level oil painting and its low price tag is just the cherry on the top.
As we touched on earlier, liquin is usually available in a range of thicknesses based around a regular liquin, two thinner options, and two thicker options. This coupled with the fact that it is also available with a number of different effects almost guarantees that you will be able to find the finish you need with liquin that would not be possible with some other mediums.
Why Do You Use Liquin Oil In Oil Painting?
Liquin is one of the most versatile paint mediums on the market so it has a number of different uses that depend on what you are trying to do with it. One of the most common uses for liquin is to simply dilute your oil paint right out of the tube to allow you to manipulate the drying time for your paint when compared with how other mediums perform. If you are working with layers then this can be particularly useful as you can increase or decrease the expected drying time of your oil paints as required by using different amounts of liquin.
Another very popular used of liquin for oil painting is for making your own oil paint at home by adding some form of pigment to it. This is becoming an increasingly popular option when it comes to oil painting as it offers additional levels of control to the color and consistency of your oil paint that some tube paints simply are not able to offer. If you are just starting out then this will probably not be used on a regular basis but it can be an excellent use case for intermediate and professional level oil paint artists.
There are also a number of other use cases for liquin when oil painting but they tend to depend on the specific thickness of the liquin that you are using as well as if it has any drying effect on it too. Due to these being more speciallist use cases, we won’t be going into them in this article as liquin is extremely versatile and can be used in a huge number of ways.
Can You Mix Pigment With Liquin Oil?
You are able to mix a number of different types of pigment with liquin oil with ease with liquin oil tending to be one of the better mediums to use if you are wanting to make your own homemade oil paints. There really are a large number of different pigment types that you are able to use with your liquin with many of them having a great end result but the main three that we usually recommend to our readers are:-
In addition to these, some people use things such as eye shadow and food coloring as a form of pigment for their oil paints. Although you are able to mix these with your liquin, they do tend to have a poor end result when compared to how an actual pigment or even mica powder can perform. We just wanted to specifically point this out due to seeing a few people post negative reports for using liquin as a medium for homemade oil paints when it was actually their choice of pigment causing the issue, not their liquin.
How To Use Liquin Oil To Make Your Own Oil Paint!
Liquin is extremely easy to use making it one of the best mediums to use for beginners and professionals alike when making your own oil paint. The general concept to make your own oil paint using liquin is to simply add some color pigment to your liquin and mix it together but there is a simple tip you can implement to make the whole process much easier.
When people mix their own oil paints for the very first time, it is very common for them to use too much pigment and then have to lighten their paint making the whole process much more complicated. In our opinion, it is much easier to add smaller amounts of your pigment to your liquin and then mix it all together before adding any more pigment too it.
You will almost always have an easier time when making your own oil paints by doing it this way as it is much easier to add more pigment to your liquin to darken your paint than it is to lighten it by adding white paint and then having to counter balance with more pigment. Although it may sound like repeating the process of adding small amounts of pigment to your medium and mixing it before checking if it needs more pigment may sound time consuming, it tends to be much easier than the process if you accidentally go too dark.
Please note that if you are using a thicker liquin mix then you should be using your mixing tool to drag fresh liquin up from the bottom of your container to ensure that the pigment is mixed correctly all the way through your liquin. Due to the thicker consistency, it can be common for the pigment to only sit in the top half of your container and not fully sink to the bottom unless you use your mixing tool to force the liquin to mix with your pigment by dragging it up from the bottom.
Does Liquin Oil Make Oil Paint Dry Faster Or Slower?
Liquin is a fast-drying oil and tends to have a faster than average drying time making it an ideal option for some base coat work with your oil paints. Depending on any potential time constraints on your artwork, you can often use liquin as your main paint medium of choice for all layers as the majority of our readers are probably not painting on a time limit so are able to leave it to dry anyway.
Do You Have To Use Liquin Oil When Oil Painting?
Although you should be using a medium for your oil painting, it does not have to be liquin as there are a number of good alternatives. That said though, we do usually recommend that our readers who are new to using oil paints and making their own oil paint at home stick to either liquin or linseed oil as they both tend to be cheap, easy to use, and offer solid results.
What Can I Use Instead Of Liquin Oil For Oil Painting?
There are a large number of good alternatives to liquin on the market that you can use if you wish but some of the options do tend to be better suited to the needs of the intermediate or professional level oil painter. That said, in our opinion, you should be trying to stick within the following six mediums if you do want to use something other than liquin.
We have seen people report that they have had success with sunflower oil, coconut oil, and hemp oil but we do tend to recommend against these three as they can offer inconsistent performance. They tend to either have issues with drying, tint your paint and yellow fast or leave a residue behind once dry.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over how you can use liquin for oil painting to an end. We hope that you have found it helpful and that we have been able to ensure you can get the best results from your oil based artwork when using liquin as your medium of choice. Liquin does tend to be one of the better options, especially if you are new to using oil paints so we usually recommend it for most situations.
