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  • Oil paint is simple.

  • At its most basic, it's just a mixture of oil and pigment.

  • But depending on the color and quality, a liter of this paint could cost you between $285 and $1,000.

  • So what is it that makes this paint so special, and why is it so expensive?

  • Oil paint has been used for hundreds of years.

  • It's made from a drying oil, like flaxseed, and pigment, sometimes with fillers and thickeners added.

  • When mixed and crushed, these ingredients bind and thicken to form a permanent paint.

  • While the rise of oil paint is associated with the Renaissance, paintings using poppy-seed oil have been dated as far back as seventh-century Afghanistan.

  • But there's one key reason this paint hasn't ever been cheap: Pigments cost a lot of money.

  • So in a good oil paint, you're gonna be looking for a high pigment loading and a good-quality pigment in that high pigment loading.

  • So it doesn't matter if you have loads of pigment if it's a bad-quality pigment.

  • You're looking for lightfastness so it doesn't fade, and tests on light-fastness that have been going on for generations, in fact, for some pigments.

  • So you're not gonna create a masterpiece and then 50 years down the line it's completely washed out.

  • The highest-quality oil paint can be up to 75% pigment.

  • And throughout history, the most sought-after pigments have been worth far more than their weight in gold.

  • And that's because they take a lot of work to discover and to make.

  • The favorite imperial color in Roman times, Tyrian purple, was a bright pigment made from the glands of sea snails.

  • And it could take 12,000 snails to make just 2 grams of the color.

  • Indian yellow was originally made from the urine of cows fed only on mango leaves.

  • And in the 16th to 19th centuries, mummy brown was actually made with the ground-up remains of Egyptian mummies.

  • And while the color was perfect for some flesh tones, we quickly ran out of mummies to use.

  • Pigments do dramatically change the cost.

  • And in professional levels, you'll have series, so you'll have probably a series one, well, up to series seven.

  • The higher the number, the more expensive it is.

  • And that's due to the pigments, how difficult they are to obtain, where they come from, and also how in-demand they are as a product in the real world.

  • Possibly the most valuable, though, was ultramarine, literally meaning "beyond the sea," as it had to be mined in Afghanistan.

  • It was made from lapis lazuli, which in its purest pigment form can still cost up to $30,000 per kilo.

  • The gemstone was used to make the pigment until a synthetic version was created in 1826.

  • And the vibrant blue was valued so highly in the Renaissance that it was generally reserved for painting the robes of the Virgin Mary.

  • Synthetic versions of many of these pigments have now been created.

  • And while this means many are cheaper, some can still be difficult to produce.

  • Cobalt blue, for example, has to be made by heating its components to 1,200 degrees Celsius.

  • And once you have these pigments, they're tricky to work with.

  • Winsor & Newton has been making oil paints for almost 200 years.

  • And its factory in France produces over 5 million liters of paint each year.

  • In fact, produce paint is like cooking.

  • So here you have mixing, so we are mixing components like pigments and other additives like oil.

  • We are then milling.

  • So it depends. We're using different type of machines.

  • So we're using granite, ceramic, or steel.

  • Then we are testing, OK.

  • So testing the viscosity of the grain and, of course, the color.

  • The whole process is so select.

  • So for every single pigment, you need to handle it in a particular way.

  • So it will need a particular amount of oil with it, and that ratio changes for every pigment.

  • And you're going to need to grind it to a particular fineness.

  • And actually even with the same pigment the milling and the grinding will affect the color you have.

  • So if you overgrind you might end up with something duller, or with another color if you grind it very fine; you might end up with a purple rather than a blue.

  • The research and testing for these colors can take months or even years to get right.

  • Small samples of each color are made in a lab to measure consistency and lightfastness.

  • Above all else, the quality of oil paint needs to be reliable, as professional artists need to guarantee that what they're working on now will last for hundreds of years.

  • And despite comparatively new paints like acrylic, oil still remains an artist favorite.

  • We've still got works that are still beautiful and relevant from the 15th century.

  • And it's also, it's durable.

  • And it has this ability to layer, where you can scrape back, you can keep working, you can work on a piece for years and keep on redoing it, and it gives every piece this history.

  • And, you know, the materials themselves are expensive.

  • They're reliable. They're gorgeous.

  • I mean, they come out of the painting at you.

Oil paint is simple.

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