Hello, I'm a crafter not a painter but starting to use oils

Hi,

I do some leather crafting and coming up with some of my own special effects for dyes, paints and finishes. I've found mica pigments used for automotive paints or cosmetics work in several different mediums and finishes.

Recently I discovered some liquid oil mediums used mostly for crafting by Pebeo. The Vitrail glass paints and Fantasy Prisme and Moon special effects paints. All three can be used together for different effects as well as with fresh acrylics as they all air dry.

That surprised me as I thought the liquid oils would not permit the acrylic to set properly. The Fantasy paint effects are ones I'm working out my own method of mixing. Some combination of the solvents, mica particles sizes, viscosity, driers? causes the micas to show rheoscopic flow and sets up fast enough to form crater like or honeycomb cell like patterns. I've used the dry micas either applied dry and with alcohol sprayed or dropped on, or stirred into alcohol and applied with a dropper to get somewhat similar rheoscopic effects, then sealed when dry. Once I found the Pebeo paints, the Vitrail transparent and its clear extender, I tried using some of the micas mixed in with the extender. I used several micron sizes of micas together as it is apparent the Fantasy paints have at least 2 sizes, and did get some of the cell type effect but not the cratering. The 2 paints appear to have slightly different viscosities and the mediums are slightly different colors, odor very similar and very similar to the Vitrail.

I am curious about water mixable oils as perhaps another way to try to get this effect. Would it be possible to dilute enough with water to get this 'flowing' sort of effect yet have it dry fast enough the particles don't settle out too evenly? Can alcohol be added to the water to speed the drying? Or another siccative?

Welcome to the forum Data Junkie. I am not sure if I am qualified to answer your questions. Maybe other members maybe able to tell you something. Thanks

Hello and WELCOME!

I've seen those Pebeo paints and wondered about using them but I didn't know they were liquid oil based!

I think you're just going to have to experiment to see if the WMOs will work the way you want them too. But, frankly, I doubt if you'll be able to get them to dry as quickly as you want them to. Once the water evaporates from them, they're basically just oil paint and oil takes a very long time to dry.

There are siccatives to add to the WMOs to promote faster drying but I don't know if it would be as fast as you would need to get the effects you want.

Here's a link to mediums for the various WMO brands and most of them offer a fast drying medium if you want to experiment:

http://www.dickblick.com/water-miscible/oils/#watermiscibleoilmediums

I wish I could be of more help. Let us know if you do any experimenting as we always want to know more about the WMOs and new uses for them.

Welcome. I agree with Jan. I don't think that the drying time will be fast enough for you. here is a link to an article I wrote regarding drying times for oils and water-soluble oils. You may want to take alook at that. Unfortunately, even the fast ones take about 2 days to dry. Of course adding a lot of water may make them dry faster because there is volume of paint.

http://filarecki.com/oil-paint-drying-times.html