Water-Soluble Oil Basics

Why water-soluble Oils for your paintings? - primarily to avoid the toxic solvents.  It is definitely easier to keep brushes and yourself clean: just clean with water. Mixing with water is possible though not recommended after a first wash in.  It's better to use a medium or a thinner, but again the thinner would be used only initially.  For the results of using different mediums check out my post on the water soluble mediums:   There are several good resources on the internet.  I will list them here.
http://filarecki.com/water-soluble-oils.html.
The classic book on water-soluble oil painting is by Sean Dye: Painting with Water-soluble Oils (amazon). I used it years ago when I first experimented with water-soluble oils (aka water miscible oils or water mixable oils; we will use WMO from now on). I found the quality of the paints unacceptable; perhaps I was using too much water.  I do know that now that I use Cobra WMO's I find them much better; they were recommended by several fellow painters.
However, it's fine to mix up your brands if needed. And I will be trying to mix my regular oils with the Cobras since it seems that this is acceptable as long as the ratio is less than 1/3 regular oil to WMO. This will be a way to use up all my regular oils.  Of course, I need to make sure the color is actually the same; experimentation will be necessary.

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