When I started painting, I worked with acrylics for quite some time before I gathered the courage to try out oils. This is true for a lot of people I know. The stories of how a lot of professional artists got cancer from oil paints certainly doesn’t help.
My first mentor (who is a professional landscape artist) got cancer because the pigment from oil paints got into his body through his skin. In one of his videos, he talks about how he regrets working with oils the way he did (some of his techniques involved using fingers to move paint around). Now, he works exclusively with acrylic paints.
After hearing his story, I was very apprehensive to try out oils. I didn’t want to risk getting cancer. Cancer is not fun. The disease (obviously) is very painful but its medicine – chemo – isn’t a walk in the park either. I have seen people lose most of their strength because of chemo.
Even with all of its risks, quite a few artists use oils and live healthy lives. What are they doing different from others and what makes them immune to the dangers of oil paints. To answer this, we have to know what it is in oil paints that causes all these diseases.
The Pigment
Artist grade paints are made by taking pigment (usually a stone ground to fine powder like Cobalt for Cobalt blue) and suspending it in a medium. I say suspending and not mixing because the pigment doesn’t actually dissolve in the medium (linseed oil, acrylic emulsions, etc). It stays “suspended” in it.
The medium is what helps the pigment stick to a surface you want to paint on (like a canvas, or paper). When making oil paints pigment is usually suspended in a drying oil like linseed oil or walnut oil. The same pigment suspended in acrylic emulsions makes acrylic paint; and, for water colors the pigment is suspended in gum arabic (not water as water doesn’t stick to anything).
What does this mean for us as artists? Cadmium Yellow acrylic paint is just as dangerous as Cadmium Yellow oil paint as they both contain the same pigment with one caveat from the old days.
Oil molecules are much smaller than the molecules of acrylic emulsions so they can hold a lot more pigment. Thus, oil paints tend to be more vibrant, more saturated than acrylic paints. In olden days, the pigment for oil paints was ground so small that it could get absorbed into your body through your skin and cause cancer or other diseases. However, this is not risk in the modern world because the pigment is kept big enough to not get absorbed through skin.
Turpentine
This has to be the biggest source of danger for an artist vs other mediums. Acrylic paints and watercolors can be cleaned up with water. Oils, however, are not soluble in water so turpentine is used.
Turpentine (even when not at full strength) will cause you to get allergic to it. If you are not allergic to turpentine and you start inhaling its fumes, you WILL become allergic to it eventually. Next time you are around turpentine, you will get headaches, nausea, etc. It is not pleasant. I know of artists, who used to paint in oils and switched to acrylics because they can’t physically be near turpentine anymore.
Today, you can use odorless mineral spirits (OMS) , which is basically a much less harmful version of turpentine. It is still not completely safe as its fumes are still harmful over a long period of time. You should be fine though as long as you have adequate ventilation. Keep the windows open, paint outside, etc.
Another, more expensive but safe, alternative to turpentine is lavender oil (also known as spike oil). You can inhale its fumes all day long and it won’t harm you (unless you are allergic to it already). When I switched to oils, I used to use Gamsol (which is an OMS), but I switched to spike oil soon after.
Other Risks
Lead is harmful for the human body but lead white is one of the best whites. It reacts with the oil during oxidation and forms a much stronger film than other oil paints.
Maroger medium, invented by a French chemist, uses lead as one of its ingredients. He invented it while trying to figure out why the old masters paintings were as luminous as they were. Some paintings looks like they have light originating from them.
There are recipes for oil paints that use artificial driers like Cobalt and Manganese. These speed up the drying time of oil paints so you don’t have to wait a day to put in the next layer. I don’t have to tell you that all of them can cause heavy metal poisoning.
I still Want to Try Oils
After reading all that, if you are still curious about painting with oils, you are in luck. Now that we know what is harmful, we can work around it. Instead of turpentine, you can use Lavender oil, the fumes of which will not harm you (and it smells nice).
Stay away from paints with lead in them. In the US, you have to go out of your way to find paints with lead in them. So, avoiding lead will be fairly easy. The tubes of the paint you are about to buy will tell you the pigments used.
Paint in a well ventilated area. This advice will help artists that work with acrylic paints too. It’s never a bad idea to have fresh air circulating in your studio.
Wash your hands thoroughly after a painting session. Like the previous advise, this applies to artists that work with acrylics as well. Acrylics dry pretty fast so washing off acrylic paint off your hands is much easier. With oil paints, you need to put in some extra effort to make sure your hands are clean.
You can wear gloves or use a barrier cream if you want to be extra safe and not have to worry about some corner in your fingernails that you forgot to clean.
Finally..
If you think turpentine is just too much of an issue and it might be better to stay away from oil paints, I respect that. Nothing is worth jeopardizing your health over.
However, if you can manage the risk, be careful with it, I would recommend trying oils. I love painting in oils. After I made the switch, I liked it so much that I never used acrylic paints after that. I have 32 ounce jars of acrylic paints sitting in my studio unopened.
The effects you can get with oils are just amazing. I am told some artists can replicate these effects with acrylics; however, all the paintings I have seen so far, I could always tell if it was painted in acrylics or oils.
Regardless of what you decide to use (or not use) , art is about effective communication and enjoying the process. Using oils or acrylic won’t make you a better artist. What you are communicating to the world and how effectively you can do it, will. Happy painting!
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