Oil Paints

About

Oil paints suit painters who like having time to work. The colour stays movable on the surface for days, so you can soften an edge, blend wet-into-wet or return to a passage at the next sitting. Riot’s Australian range includes artist and student grade tubes, oil paint sets for beginners, and the linseed oil, mediums and solvents used alongside them. Oil paint or acrylic, and how to choose Drying time is the biggest practical difference. Oil paint remains workable for days, giving you time to adjust colour and blend directly on the canvas. Acrylic can begin drying within minutes. That makes it convenient for quick layers, although it leaves much less time to soften an edge. Cleanup matters as well. Acrylic brushes can be rinsed with water, while traditional oils require a solvent or lower-odour alternative. Someone painting in short sessions or in a room with poor ventilation may find acrylic paints easier to manage. Oil is worth the extra setup when longer blending time and gradual colour transitions are important to the work. Artist quality or student quality The main difference is pigment load. Artist grade oil paint generally contains more pigment and less filler, which gives it stronger colour and changes how it behaves when mixed. Student grade paint uses more binder and filler to keep the price accessible. Art Spectrum tubes show another distinction that often confuses new painters. The S1, S2 and S3 markings refer to the cost of the pigment rather than the overall quality of the paint. Cadmium and cobalt colours usually belong to a higher series because those pigments cost more to produce. Earth colours tend to sit in the lower series. Student grade is perfectly reasonable for learning, practising colour mixtures and covering larger under-layers. You can use artist grade for colours where strength matters most and student paint elsewhere. There is no need for every tube in the paint box to belong to the same grade. Starting colours for a first oil painting A