• Langridge Professional Oil Paints

Natural drying oil used as a traditional binder for grinding oil colours. Has increased wetting power and imparts flexibility to paint films.

Made by crushing the safflower seed under great pressure, Low yield of oil from the seed using this extraction method. Safflower, like all artists’ drying oils, harden by absorbing oxygen. As it oxidises, it also polymerizes at a molecular level being changed into a non-reversable film.

Constituents
Safflower Oil. Extracted from Safflower seed
(Carthamus tinctorus) using cold pressing method.

Product Application

Langridge Cold Pressed Safflower Oil may be used for the grinding of oil colours. It may also be added to oil colours and oil mediums at the discretion of the artist.

Cold Pressed Safflower Oil is used extensively for grinding pale pigments because of its’ very light colour that will alter minimally the colour of the resulting milled oil paint. It does not have as great a wetting power as cold pressed safflower oil however its refinement process makes it less prone to yellowing over time and slightly faster drying. Safflower oil is considered, alongside poppy, to be the most desirable drying oil for making white, blue and other pale coloured oil paints.

As a medium, Langridge Cold Pressed Safflower Oil adds a loose, slippery quality when added to oil colours. Safflower oil, however, does not dry to as tough a final film as linseed and the use of safflower should be kept to a minimum as a medium to aid fluidity or transparency. Use sparingly, and if wishing to employ glazes or washes Langridge recommends the use of Stand Oil, a virtually non-yellowing oil which dries to a tougher, more resilient film than safflower, as the basis for painting mediums.

Cold Pressed Safflower Oil is very slow drying. The paint film will stay open and is easily moved or reworked for up to 72 hours, the surface of the paint film staying wet for up to a week.

This can be problematic in severely slowing down the painting process. Cobalt driers may be introduced to accelerate drying rates, but the potential for increasing the yellowing of the paint film when driers are incorrectly added should be noted.

Langridge Cold Pressed Safflower Oil should be considered a slow drying ‘fat’ medium. It should not be used for underpainting if oil colours with no additional safflower oil is to be applied on top.

Dries to a gloss finish.