Medium is a mixture of oil and turpentine that is combined with oil paint to promote paint spreading and distribution.
"Medium" is a term for a mixture that may be combined with oil paint to thin the paint. It helps extend the pigment of the paint over a large surface. This is useful to artists working with oil because pure oil paint is thick, slow drying and expensive. Creating an image from pure oil paint squeezed straight from the tube makes a painting highly textured and requires a lot of unnecessary paint. Because of this, most artists use a thinner or medium. Mediums may be made by hand with a mixture of oils and thinners, or mediums may be purchased at art and craft stores.
Instructions
1. Get out your palette, easel, paint, jars and paintbrushes. Read the directions on the back of the jar of medium. Open the jar of medium and pour a small amount of medium into an empty baby-food size jar. Pour enough medium into the jar to cover the bottom. As you work more with medium, you'll pour more into a jar. Place a test canvas or canvas board on an easel. This test canvas will be used to see the effects of the medium on the paint.
2. Dip your paintbrush into a glob of pure paint on the palette. Paint a shape onto the canvas.
3. Dip a clean paintbrush into the medium so the medium covers the brush. Next, dip the paintbrush into the paint on the palette. Mix the paint and the medium on the palette. There should be enough paint-to-medium that the mixture does not appear to be thin. The mixture should appear to be almost as thick as the paint itself, without medium. Paint a few streaks and shapes on the canvas beside the shapes you painted in step 2.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 with different paint colors. Try blending the two paint colors on the canvas and note the results. The paint that has been mixed with medium may blend differently than the paint that has not.
5. Set the test canvas aside for a few days to dry. When not in use, put lids on your jars of medium and on your palette. In a few days, return to the canvas and examine the results. You may notice the medium-mixed paint is shiny compared to the non-medium mixed paint. If you're happy with the results, use this same method of mixing medium with oil paint the next time you create a painting.
