Healthy Painting!

I can’t believe I’ve just discovered this! I now realize that when my art teachers told me the formula for paint medium (stand oil, turpentine and damaar varnish) and how I should thin paint and clean brushes with turpentine, I believed this was the LAW- Gospel. If I didn’t do this my paintings would explode, fall apart and look horrible. And even though I am obviously very interested in non-toxic painting, I still had to overcome ALOT of resistance. It seemed so wrong to put away my turpentine jars, it was all I knew. I’m now happy to report, that straight Walnut oil as a medium works perfect. It’s the perfect consistency, not too shiny and dries at the same speed. To clean my brushes, I swish them in 2 jars of walnut oil (a “clean” one and then the “dirty” one). I wipe them and swish them in Brush Flush and then give a quick soap wash. My brushes actually are cleaner than when I used turpentine. I was a little worried about how to get that nice watery, turpentine wash for the beginning of my painting. I’ve figured out a temporary solution: I used water-soluble oil paint and mixed it with alot of water to get a wonderful wash. It worked perfect!