As more and more people start to take part in oil painting as a way to pass the time, we have noticed more and more people reaching out to ask about the various mediums that they are able to use for their oil painting. As we have been working our way through covering some of the other popular oil mediums on the market, we have noticed a steady increase in the number of people asking how to use stand oil for oil painting.
Due to this steady increase in the people looking at using stand oil for their oil painting, we have decided to publish this dedicated article on the medium. Our hope is that we will be able to help our readers get the most out of their stand oil and get the best possible results from their artwork.
At the time of writing, stand oil is underrated too with it being one of the better oil paint mediums that is often either overlooked or not even known about by beginners in the oil painting space. We hope that this article will also be able to help raise awareness to stand oil and its excellent benefits for your oil painting too to help our readers realise that there are a large number of decent oil mediums out there that they are able to use.
Is Stand Oil Good For Oil Painting?
In our opinion, stand oil is one of the better oil painting mediums on the market and it tends to perform better than the majority of other options but it does have a slightly higher price tag to reflect this. This is due to a decent quality stand oil being a highly refined linseed oil product.
We have already gone over the various advantages and disadvantages of linseed oil in our article on using linseed oil for oil painting but the additional refining process of strand oil removed more of the disadvantages of regular linseed oil. With linseed oil being one of, if not the most popular oil medium in the world, stand oil is essentially the next level up for it but rarely gets mentioned anywhere near as much as regular linseed oil.
Although stand oil does have a number of advantages over regular linseed oil, the most common one is that it doesn’t yellow once applied to your canvas, paper or other painting surface. Although a high-quality linseed oil product should not yellow anytime soon anyway, after a number of years, it can be common for a yellow tint to form when using linseed oil as your paint medium. The additional refining process for stand oil removes the impurities that cause this effect to occur to ensure that your artwork will not yellow.
Why Do You Use Stand Oil In Oil Painting?
Stand oil offers user three main benefits when used as their medium of choice for their oil painting. The main use case for stand oil for oil painting is as a way to thin a high-quality oil paint directly out of the tube prior to applying it to your canvas or other painting surface. Although all oil mediums do offer you this use case, the consistence of your oil paint when mixed with stand oil does tend to be easier to apply to the majority of commonly used painting surfaces.
The second benefit of using stand oil for your oil painting is an advancement on the better consistency of your paint when mixed with stand oil that we just touched on. The majority of people find that the consistency of an oil paint that has been thinned with stand oil tends to be easier to control with your brush strokes when applying it to your painting surface than oil paints mixed with other mediums. This tends to be true with an entry-level brush set too that can be notorious for offering poor control over the paint application helping to secure stand oil a place with beginner oil painters.
The third main use case for stand oil in your oil painting is to use it as a medium to directly mix a paint pigment with it to make your own oil paint at home. Although the majority of people do still tend to use a tube based paint for oil painting, more and more people are starting to use the various types of pigment as it tends to offer a few advantages. Stand oil tends to be one of the easier mediums to mix an actual pigment with too making it the ideal option for anyone new to mixing their own oil paints too.
Can You Mix Pigment With Stand Oil?
Stand oil is one of the better mediums suitable for use with oil paints that mix well with the various pigment options on the market. That said though, we do still recommend that our readers try to stick to the main pigment options rather than a DIY option hat are becoming increasingly popular. In our opinion, if you are wanting to mix pigment directly with stand oil then you should be using either of the following three options:-
Although other options such as food coloring, eye shadow, and chalk are becoming popular, cheap alternatives to traditional pigments, we would always recommend that you go with any of the three linked above. The cheaper pigment alternatives tend to perform well initially but then have issues with rapid fading, loss of detail, and peeling at the months go by.
How To Use Stand Oil To Make Your Own Oil Paint!
Making your own oil paint using stand oil is as simple as taking some of your paint pigment of choice and adding it in stages of small amounts to your stand oil and mixing it. We recommend that you add your pigment in small amounts as it tends to offer a better consistency for your paint at the end as well as making it easier to match it with the color you need.
We would recommend that you add some stand oil to a suitable mixing container and then add a small amount of your pigment to it. Use a suitable mixing tool to thoroughly mix the two together but be sure to keep pulling fresh strand oil up from the bottom of your mixing container. Unlike linseed oil, the more refined strand oil is much thicker meaning that it can be harder for the pigment to naturally sink to the bottom of the container so you have to help it with the mixing stick.
After your initial mix, compare the current color of your homemade paint to your target color and then repeat the process of adding a small amount of pigment and mixing it again and re-checking. Don’t worry if the color of your paint is much lighter than expected after your initial mix as this is to be expected and you will usually have to go through the process three to four times to reach your intended color.
Although you maybe tempted to add a large amount of pigment at the start of the mixing process, we usually recommend against this as it tends to cause issues with the consistency of your paint as well as your color. It tends to be much quicker and easier to add pigment in stages then to add a large amount and then have to lighten it during the process.
Does Stand Oil Make Oil Paint Dry Faster Or Slower?
The majority of stand oil products will usually take around a day to dry fully and build suitable for additional layers to be added on top of it. Due to this, many people will often use a fast-drying medium for the base layers on their oil painting projects such as distilled turpentine that we go into more detail on using in our article on using turpentine for oil painting. This usually allows you to get your base layers down quickly and let them dry for additional layers to be applied to them.
You then add your layers of oil paint mixed with stand oil on top of your base layers as you are usually able to leave them longer to dry while you do other things. If you do specifically need a slow drying oil paint medium then using something like poppy oil may be a better option though due to its extremely slow drying time but stand oil usually offers a nice drying time that can be used for the majority of painting tasks.
Do You Have To Use Stand Oil When Oil Painting?
Although it is highly recommended that you do use some type of medium with your oil paints, it does not have to be stand oil as there are a number of suitable alternatives. As we touched on earlier in the article, stand oil does tend to be more expensive than some of the other popular oil paint mediums with many people who are new to oil painting who are looking to keep their costs as low as possible choosing to go with one of the options covered in the section below in stead.
What Can I Use Instead Of Stand Oil For Oil Painting?
There are a number of great stand oil alternatives that you are able to use with your oil painting with many of the options below being more popular than stand oil in the arts and crafts community due to their lower price tags. Although there are a number of other mediums that people do try with oil paints, we always recommend our readers either use stand oil or one of the six alternatives below:-
Although more and more people have started to use sunflower oil with their oil paints, it does have a number of drawbacks so we tend not to recommend that our readers use it. If you would like to know more then we go into much more detail in our article on using sunflower oil with oil paints. We also have an article on 11 alternative paint mediums that people use that may be helpful too.
In addition to this, we also have the two articles below that go into detail on why two other oil paint medium options should be avoided:-
- 6 Reasons You Shouldn’t Use Olive Oil For Oil Painting!
- 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Use Coconut Oil For Oil Painting!
Conclusion
That brings our article going over how you can use stand oil for oil painting to a close. Although we do feel that stand oil is one of the better options to thin your oil paint, we know that the higher than average price tag can put many people off so understand why the majority of people do usually go with an alternative option. That said though, if you are a professional level artist then going with strand oil does tend to be the best option possible.
