Oil Paints - Anything Else is Just a Crude Alternative

With the advent of cheap, modern, chemical paints, the humble and reliable oil paint has been forgotten as anything more than an artists medium used on canvas. What most people don't realize is that when these advances in chemical paint came about they weren't necessarily better products. Although quick drying and easy to apply, most chemical paints don't have anywhere near the longevity, flexibility or come close to the environmental friendliness of oil paints.

A type of slow-drying paint consisting of small pigment particles suspended in a drying oil, oil paint is best known for its use on canvas, creating classics like the Mona Lisa. Oil Painting allows the artist to use layers to create a depth within the painting whilst its slow dry time allows the artists to mix on an easel and gave birth to impressionist work, enabling the artist to leave to studio and run out into the wilderness.

Oil paints can and are also used as surface protection on interior and exterior surfaces, most notably and effectively wood. Usually made from linseed oil, modern oil paints used on surfaces are long lasting, waterproof, durable, increase the longevity of wood (as opposed to encouraging rot like many chemical based paints), and are often 100% natural (oxides included). Oil paint has been used in Scandinavia as a structure and surface paint since the 18th century. As a long-lasting and solvent free Linseed based product, it penetrates and protects wood extremely well, often better than many modern chemical paints. Oil paint developed for exterior surfaces often leads the eco friendly bandwagon, being made with no un-natural or chemical ingredients or processes. Pigments in oil paints generally come from natural and mineral sources and can be applied to a variety of surfaces including metals, woods and concrete.

In addition to this oil paint is also extremely long lasting, and when being used or drying has a pleasant natural smell; absent of noxious and irritating chemical smells that modern chemical paints produce, often rendering rooms or entire houses inhabitable, instead being replaced by a pleasant natural smell. Surfaces painted with oil paints are also able to breathe freely, meaning wood wont decay or rot underneath and repainting is as simple as applying a new coat after a light clean as opposed to the time consuming and difficult process of removing previous coats down to the original surface again. Drying to a somewhat rubbery surface allows oil paint to stay flexible and move with a surface too, meaning less maintenance where modern chemical paints would be prone to cracking and peeling from movement or temperature change causing expansion and contraction.

Source : ezinearticles