Old Holland Paint and Some of My Favorite Things - PART 1

Curious about the materials I choose to use? I hope so because these next few blogs will be little art material geeky.
Old Holland Paint . Old Holland is my favorite paint. It's very expensive but that is OK because it does the job I want done, the way I want it. The paint is made in Drieburgen, Netherlands and it is a very old brand.It is has been in production for over 300 hundred years.There was a guild system back then and every apprenticed began by learning to make paint. Old Holland's has the very best and highest concentration of pigments mixed only with cold-pressed extra virgin linseed oil. Simple. Two ingredients;pigment and oil. Pure and simple.

Each tube of paint has a strip of paint painted from the paint in that tube. It shows you what is in there. Old Holland paint batches do vary. I don't mind working with that variation. I know what I am working with and it's honest to what I see on the tube.

Because the paint has a high concentration of pigments, it is a very stiff and thick paint. For my painting knife handling i want this characteristic. But brush painters may find themselves needing to add a medium. Old Holland paint, after it dried in the test of my teacher Ed Stitt from ten years ago, appeared to be somewhat brittle on canvas without medium. That rigidity is a characteristic that works for me because I paint primarily on painting panel.

I do use other paint manufacturers such as Gamblin, always the Windsor Newton Sap Green, RGH, Rembrandt, Williamsburg Oils. Which manufacturer I use sometimes depends on my budget or a particular color availability. I am now trying a Vasari paint that I bought on sale. It's rich and smooth but that is not a characteristic that I need with a painting knife on panel so I don't think I will be buying more unless I become a brush painter. I may stray every once and a while on the recommendation of another artist but I always come back home to Old Holland. It's thick and rich. It's heavily pigmented with the best color. It's honest and simple and reliable. I get great coverage with this paint and so it lasts me a very long time and it's performance pays it's way.