lead white with walnut & linseed

[Marc]

Earlier in the year I bought some boutique food grade walnut oil with no additives and made a small sample of lead white paint with it. At the same time I also made lead white with cold pressed linseed.

Here painted on clear plastic and placed over a white acrylic gessoed canvas

The linseed version dried in 3 days. The walnut oil took about two weeks. No driers were added. The pigment was from Maimeri and may no longer be available from them. Both samples are absolutely dry. When wet the linseed paint was very slightly more yellow, but upon both drying, the walnut seemed if anything, seemed more yellow. However after a few months this flipped and the linseed became the yellower and it has remained that way since.

I also tried a 50/50 mix, but this seems to function as a straight linseed. It dried in four days and yellowed like the pure linseed.

None of them I think are very yellow over all, they have been in a mostly well lit room, but never in direct sunlight, the colour is about correct on my computer.

 

[ntl]

Interesting results.
I haven't used WN Cremnetz white (PW1) for a few years, and I think mostly with store walnut oil. Never on plastic. I had no problem with it drying on canvas.

 

[Marc]

I wouldn't say it was a problem drying, just slow drying. Different walnut oils have different speeds drying one imagines. I don't know which type of walnut is used in standard oil painting use. I should try the test again with another walnut oil at the same time.

Winsor & newton's old discontinued cremnitz white in safflower* had an added lead dryer. I suppose I could add one too

*Someone years back in email communication with Winsor and Newton said they added just a little linseed though not enough to declare it on the tube. Makes me wonder it they did it with all "safflower" paints perhaps to adjust for seasonal or locational crop differences to the safflower acid ratios.

 

[Cremnitz]

This looks like a topic made for my user name!

I have been making my own oils for a few years but have never made a lead white. I just scored a pretty big pile of very thin used lead sheets that came from the walls of an X-Ray room that was torn down, and will be trying to make some lead oxide pigment this winter. I have a couple of gallons of cold pressed pure linseed oil as well as the same in walnut oil. It looks like I should try both.

 

[ntl]

Did you ever get to make your white? No worries, I haven't gotten my oils out for a long time, I was just wondering.

 

[Marc]

Did you ever get to make your white? No worries, I haven't gotten my oils out for a long time, I was just wondering.

It will take Cremnitz many months to oxidize the lead sheets.

 

[Marc]

I should try the test again with another walnut oil at the same time.

Testing again with the local cold pressed beside a sample made with Schmincke refined walnut oil. Test started on the 5th of February and both still wet.

 

[Marc]

The cold pressed walnut is now dry, but the Schmincke walnut isn't. The cold pressed has dried twice as fast as last time. Maybe this sample was leaner? Or maybe the oil itself is now thickening in the bottle. Shaking the bottles; the Schmincke might be a little more like water and the cold pressed leaning a little towards olive oil in fluidity. The bottle of Schmincke is certainly more pale and the paint sample from it just the very, very, fraction more so as well, but the real proof is when it dries.

 

[Marc]

Schmincke still isn't dry and doesn't look as though it will be dry tomorrow either. Ten days or more is really too slow for me as I like to adjust and layer my paint. Starting another test where I mix in fractions of the now discontinued W&N Cremnitz. (A safflower white with added lead drier.)

Test has 1/3, 1/4, 1/8 and zero addition of W&N's. Not Ideal solution, but I have many tubes of it. The goal is to have a lifetime (or what I have left at least.) supply of low yellowing lead white oil paint. It seems to be getting harder and harder to import some things into my country so I want to be more self reliant with what I can get or already have.

 

[Marc]

lead white in Schmincke walnut, with W&N lead white 1/3 dry in two days. 1/4 and1/8 dry in four days. The 1/3 dries at the same speed as straight W&N Cremnitz. I've noticed that safflower paints with driers mixed with linseed paints (without any apparent driers) can dry faster than either of the unmixed colours. Despite this walnut oil being a slow drier, its probably still quicker than safflower oil. Thus the addition of a smaller amount of drier has a greater effect.

Doing another test of 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16. Retest the first two and see if an even smaller addition has something like the same drying speed.

BTW; The original Schmincke walnut sample is still not dry!

 

[Marc]

Lead white made only with Schmincke walnut oil has finally dried. Took three weeks! Doesn't seemed to have yellowed at all. I mean it probably has a little, but not so that I can tell. It does show the requirement of driers with some colors when not using linseed oil, and perhaps sometimes even then depending on the pigment.

Imagine if I used this walnut oil to make paint with titanium white, or ultramarine, or cadmium, or viridian, or a synthetic organic? It would still be wet after more than a month. Now make it impasto; it would likely take years! However the problem of adding driers yourself is the risk of adding too much. The method of adding a little respected makers paint with driers already in it seems to be a safer bet, though not admittedly fully in the realm of the purist.

 

[Cremnitz]

Did you ever get to make your white? No worries, I haven't gotten my oils out for a long time, I was just wondering.

Was that question directed to me? Not yet..... There is a method that uses acid in open topped containers along with the lead sheets in separate open topped containers, both of them inside a plastic tub with a mostly air tight lid, that creates a lovely lead oxide in a very short amount of time, compared to using manure as was done traditionally. The video was removed from YouTube or I would share it with you. It needs to be pretty warm, so I won't be trying it until summer as it will be done outside.

 

[Hermes2020]

Lead white made only with Schmincke walnut oil has finally dried. Took three weeks! Doesn't seemed to have yellowed at all. I mean it probably has a little, but not so that I can tell. It does show the requirement of driers with some colors when not using linseed oil, and perhaps sometimes even then depending on the pigment.

Imagine if I used this walnut oil to make paint with titanium white, or ultramarine, or cadmium, or viridian, or a synthetic organic? It would still be wet after more than a month. Now make it impasto; it would likely take years! However the problem of adding driers yourself is the risk of adding too much. The method of adding a little respected makers paint with driers already in it seems to be a safer bet, though not admittedly fully in the realm of the purist.

Firstly, thank you for sharing the results of your experiments with us. It has been an interesting thread. Secondly, as a fan of alkyd paints (I try to use the Winsor & Newton Griffin ones whenever I can in my own paintings), I would love to see the results if you make paint with the white lead pigment and an alkyd medium.

 

[Marc]

Glad it found some appreciation. I would be low effort to make a small sample of alkyd lead, but it was reported in tests nearly twenty years ago that alkyd lead white dried too hard and was a little on the brittle side. Still, I might try it. Winsor & Newton stopped making it very shortly afterwards BTW.
Their alkyd titanium white performed very well. Far better if I recall, than their titanium oil whites. Which is just as well as it's the only Griffin white they make now.
I read around the same time back then of alkyd paints delaminating away from zinc galvanised surfaces. I asked Winsor & Newton if this was why they didn't have zinc white in the Griffin range. That the zinc oxide was reacting poorly with the alkyd to a similar effect and they replied, "No. In out tests it discoloured. Very badly."
I tried making a sample with liquin fine detail and it went grey! Then after about a month I looked at it again and it had turned the colour of nicotine. So that was interesting. Well for me at least.

 

[Hermes2020]

Marc, you are a kindred spirit; I love researching and experimenting as well! My guess is that the zinc oxide is undergoing some type of chemical reaction with the alkyd resin. That's good to know.

 

[john]

I don't like the smell of linseed oil so I use walnut oil paints which have far less smell to them..M Graham. But yeah, they take a long time to dry without some alkyd added. If I use walnut alkyd medium they dry pretty much overnight.