How to Choose the Best Oil Paint for Your Painting?
Oil Paints
Well, it’s depend on the purpose of your painting. If your painting is just a practice oil painting, then student grade paints would be suitable, while if you’re painting for hobbies or as a gift for your friend, the artist grade paints is good and if your painting is for sale or for any art gallery, premium grade paints would be a perfect one of your choice.
However, there are additional points to take in to your consideration:
1. Your artistic need – it’s about what paint will be best for you to be able to produce an adequately high quality result. Artistic need oftentimes judge by satisfied, and it may with lower quality paints. For some artist painters, student grade paints will work, depending on subjects and final resting place. For professionals, better paints become more of an issue.
2. Economic need – with all economic issues going all around the world, most people will look for a bargain when they need to shopping, including artist painters as well. As a painter, I need to keep my paints cost less, while still be able to offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee to all of my customers. Unfortunately that from my experience, most cheap paints seem to not assist me to achieve that, therefore I still need more expensive paints for my painting. And it’s also because the more expensive paints will have quite good quality which will assist in better control of paint, better opacity and transparency, and paints more suited to the technique we like to employ. At last, I will get painting which I can be proud of.
A recent survey on well known on a well known artist forum found the “favorite paint” to be “Winsor Newton” by more than 50% of the respondents (including myself), 25% accept the lower quality and another 25% feel the better quality paints are needed.
Student grade paints- are lower quality paints. These paints usually have less pigment and more “filler”, so the opaque paints are not quite so opaque and the transparent paints tend to be waxy and weak. Some student
Winsor Newton Oil Paints
paint lines are fairly decent, such as the Maimeri Classico brand or Winsor Newton Winton brand.
Here are some student grade paints:
- DR Georgian
- Van Gogh
- Permalba/Bob Ross
- Winton
- Classico (best one, no fillers)
Artist grade paints – there is a broad range of artist grade paints which can be used to produce professional results. This is the bulk of paint brands on the market, and they are fairly economical choices, surely produce a better quality than student grade brands. Artist paints feature higher pigment loads, with better pigment quality and more single pigment choices.
Here are some recommended artist grade paints:
- Grumbacher
- Zecchi
- Da Vinci
- Art Spectrum (Australia)
- Lefranc et Bourgeois
- Richeson Shiva
- Gamblin
- Holbein
- Sennelier
- M. Graham
- Rembrandt
- Daniel Smith
- Winsor Newton
- Robert Doak
- Natural Pigments
Premium grade paints – include all the best paints with the best pigments, the best production oversight, the best tubes, the best – best! These paints have the highest pigment load, the best opacity, the cleanest transparencies, even when diluted with mediums. These are usually the most expensive, but you get more for your money in most cases. Consistency of the paint is another area where the premium paints shine – they spread well from the tube, or they are so laden with pigment that slight additional oil might be desired to blend to suit the artist.
Here are list of premium grade paints:
- Studio Products
- Blue Ridge
- Williamsburg
- Maimeri Puro
- Michael Harding
- Mussini
- Blockx
- Vasari
- Old Holland
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About the author :
Rose Iadsai is the founder of Samui Art Gallery which offer genuine hand-painted oil paintings & oil painting reproductions for sale. Connect with Samui Art on Twitter and Facebook.
Thanks for this. I remember some of the lower-quality paint brands from my student days
Hi,
Paiting has always been my hobby but oil painting is something totally new to me. If I want to purchase my first set of brushes and oil paint, what brand would you recommend? I’m still at school so I hope it’s not going to cost too much.
Hi Chris,
For oil paint I would recommend “Classico”, painting brushes I would recommend “W&N Monarch brush” or “Princeton Synthetic Mongoose Brushes, Series 6600″. They are good quality and not too expensive. You can also look on eBay for cheaper price.
ometimes i buy the less expensive, but it isn´t so good.
Very helpful post, especially the lists of the best types of paints for different grades. I will be referring to this later. Thanks.
well this painting builds a career for many artist . Thank you for your post.
Thank you for the post. I am an artist at heart but for me, I don’t have that full skill in painting. I just love to paint but not to the point to be called an expert. I usually use colored pencil and I just started to purchase some oil paints to make my masterpiece more lively and realistic. Based on the purposes of oil paint division in your post, I rather choose the group belonged to the economic need. I will not take a risk to use the oil paints for professionals and of course I will not settle to those for beginners. Maybe, I could make a better oil paint next month. Thank you again.
Hi….I like to paint during my free time but oil painting is somewhat new to me also…I want to try this sometime. Nice post and very informative.
My brother who happens to be a painter by passion collects different kinds of oil paints. His birthday is getting nearer and I want to surprise him by giving a gift which is an expensive and high quality oil paint. Thanks for this post! At least, I’ve come up to an idea on what to give him on his birthday. Ms. Rose aside from your very informative post, can you share with me on what is the best quality of oil paint I could possibly give to my brother? I know your one of the experts of it and I’m expecting that you could give me a concrete answer to the surprise gift I want for my brother. Thanks a lot!
Quality doesn’t necessarily mean that it should be expensive, sometimes you can get a really very good kind of an oil paint for a lesser cost without compromising it’s quality, you just have to be really patient before you can find one. I am an oil painting enthusiast and I choose the best oil paint possible every time I paint. I do it for leisure and I love doing it.
[...] Canvas or Other Support 2. Oil Paint 3. Brushes [...]
Hello, I’m French and I practice oil painting since childhood.
The oil paintings (extra fine) are very expensive , but mostly because they are often packaged in small quantities.
One solution is to buy large tubes through which the paint is much cheaper.
In France, one can find quite easily (in stores for artists or from wholesalers) tubes of paint Lefranc & Bourgeois 150 ML.
This is a really good deal if you make a lot of oil painting.
(sorry for my bad english)
Great article! Nice to learn about the different qualities & brands of the paints! Gosh – I never heard of some of the brands of paints! I look forward to reading all your posts on painting & selling paintings.