Cold Pressed versus Refined Linseed Oil
We often get asked if our linseed oil cold pressed or refined the answer is it is both!
Books often state cold pressed linseed oil (CPLO) is the best for oil paint making this is not quite true, when the first pressing of flax seeds takes place the oil that is extracted is quite dark and contains much mucilage and other impurities which tend to darken with age. Various writers explain how to refine further CPLO to remove these; the writings of Tadd Spurgen explain in detail how to do this. If I was to make any white oil paint using a CPLO it might not surprise artists that since using a darker oil the resulting colour of the white would be darker. Particular in the case of titanium paints since oil always likes to come to the surface of the paint film and you then get what appears to be a glaze of the natural colour of the oil. Also not surprisingly a lighter clearer oil will not exhibit such a pronounced colour shift. Its rather obvious if you think about it! Our linseed oil has first be cold pressed and then it is further refined giving it a very light colour. I was recently in the studio of my good friend Leo Mancini Heresko a Boston based artist and ex Florence Academy Professor, Leo was extolling the virtues of he most recent experiments involving the refinement of CPLO.
He had acquired a nice rich looking CPLO he had then combined it with an equal part of water and an amount of sand, he had shaken it and drained it according to various directions and achieved a very pleasing shade of pale linseed. Out of interest he and I decided to make a further experiment using my linseed we use for our entire paint making. We shook it up with water for a few minutes and left it to stand a few hours. I was excited about perhaps being able to offer artist an addition to our mediums, to our surprise as the hours past there was no separation of mucilage of any sought. Yes the sand and water sunk to the bottom of our container with the oil not surprisingly on top however were we had expected to see a nice waxy deposit of impurities, there was none! The good news our oil was already pure enough with no need of further refinement, the bad news there was to be no new oil medium added to the range…. For those of you who would like to use CPLO I would urge you to conduct this refinement yourselves or simply use our linseed oil which is now available in various sizes.