With extra care and effort, artists can make almost any type of soap or cleaner work for studio clean-up. Some products consume a lot of water, some are much harder on brushes than others and some leave sticky residues behind. But most all do a decent job with extra effort.
And though we at Gamblin feel it’s never a good idea to wash pigments down the drain, each artist gets to choose the clean-up method that works best for them.
For modifying oil colors and mediums, however, alternatives to true artist’s thinners, even in very small amounts, can create major and unpredictable problems in artists’ paintings.
Effects on Paint Layers
Gamblin has tested a range of alternatives to true artist’s solvents, with some important and concerning results.
One family of products are corn-based solvents, sometimes sold as “bio-solvents” or “green” cleaners. These products had a biting smell, cut through multiple paint layers and dissolved the natural bristles of brushes.
In other tests, only a third to two-thirds of some alternative solvents evaporated, leaving behind a sticky residue in paintings.
Others thinned colors okay, but evaporated so slowly that they became trapped in paint layers. This caused clouding and matting as well as pocked, weak paint layers that could be easily scratched away.
Create without compromise
Gamsol has the ideal solvent strength ñ strong enough to effectively thin oil colors and clean brushes, but not so strong that it will dissolve dry paint layers or the bristles of your brushes.
Gamsol also has the ideal evaporation rate to support the flow of one’s painting and to allow artists to work in a safe studio without compromising artistic possibilities or permanence.
We want to caution artists of the significant and unpredictable risks that alternative solvents pose when they get into their paintings, even in very small amounts.
For modifying oil colors, we have always recommended Gamsol for its balance of performance and safety. Other true artist’s solvents can also do the job of thinning one’s oil colors, albeit with some to a great deal of compromise in Studio Safety.
Gamblin’s family of Galkyd painting mediums, Cold Wax, Gamvar Picture Varnish and Ground are all formulated with Gamsol. For this reason, as well as the range of other solvents available to artists (and their shifting formulations), we recommend only Gamsol for thinning these materials.