Winsor & Newton 250ml Liquin Light Gel

Good for oil mixing in painting art

It is used to help the flow and drying time of oil paint. It’s good value for money, and it’s safe to use.

Made the paint too glossy

I've been using Liquin Original for years. When I trained in fine art in Italy, just about every academy recommended it as basic equipment for every painter. It is a fixotropic liquid, so you have to shake it up to get it moving (a bit like tomato ketchup). It then becomes a thick liquid, the colour of weak tea, which is mixed with oil paint and other additives to make a workable paint. I use it with mineral spirit and linseed oil to make a general purpose medium. It produces a paint with a creamy consistency, which I've found most brushes handle well. if you need a drier in the mixture, such as a drop of cobalt, it;s fine with that, too. Despite it's colour, it doesn't dis-colour paint. Added to white, the white remains white.Liquin is generally much cheaper in larger bottles. I'd avoid buying too much in one go though, because it does go off after a year or so. When left out on a palette, it will dry in a few days, to produce a kind of latex material. It cleans out of brushes easily, so long as you don't leave it to dry on the brush.

Good value, took quiet a while to be delivered.

This is the best thing ever for mixing with oil paints! Before, using linseed oil as a medium, I would need to wait a couple of days between painting layers. But liquin is great at speeding up drying. Just paint and finish for the day. The next morning you're ready for the next layer! On glazing stages I mix half and half liquin and linseed oil which drys just as quickly.It can be much more expensive in art supply shops, and I have had a hard time finding it. Sometimes only finding one of the smaller bottles in stock.

This stuff is magic - it gives my paintings a lovely glazed quality. And of course the paint dries in no time so you can put layer upon layer. God knows what the conservators of the future will think. I recently read a criticism of Howard Hodgkin's work saying his paintings look better in reproduction than in the flesh owing to Liquin. Does this worry me? I can live with that.

Like most Winsor and Newton stuff, this is a good quality Liquin for artist needs. Will buy again