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Originally Posted by Enzie Shahmiri
Thanks Virgil! I do have another question for you. How bad is a drop of clove oil on a paint glob, to prevent drying out? I resorted to this because I just LOOVVVVEEE the smell of clove oil! 
Well, actually I needed to stop the fast drying process during the heat wave here. But now in hindsight I am wondering how much that can affect the adherance effect of the paint. |
Enzie,
Yes, oil of clove does smell good, but that might be a better reason to use it for perfume or air freshener than to add it to your paints. It does slow the drying, but it does so with consequences to the resulting paint film.
There are better ways to achieve slow drying, if that's what you want, such as eliminating naturally fast-drying paints from your palette. That would mean umbers and siennas, lead whites, and phthalocyanines above all. However, lead white produces the most durable paint films of all oil paints, so I wouldn't want to do without that. I'm able to work with the drying time of lead whites myself, so the trick is not so much to adjust the drying of the paint as it is to waste no time while painting, to get to a stopping point before the paint begins to set up and ceases to be blendable. In other words, an adjustment in technique might be in order if the paint is drying before you've gotten far enough with the painting. One can cover more canvas in a given amount of time with large brushes than with smaller ones, for one consideration. In my opinion, painting faster is better than slowing the drying of the paints with clove oil.
You might try Genesis paints if you like to work wet-into-wet for extended periods of time without worrying about the paint drying. Genesis will not dry until you want it to. It requires heat to make it dry. The kit comes with a heat gun to use for that purpose.
I hope that helps in some way.
Virgil