Pale Drying Gel is a firm oil gel medium made with linseed oil and fumed silica. Add to hasten drying of oil colours for creating transparency for glazes and faster-drying paint layers. Contains manganese driers, so use it sparingly to avoid drying cracks in paint layers. Add directly to your paint to give it transparency without thinning its consistency. Add to pigments or extenders to thicken the gel to create impasto effects that do not sink in.
When Pale Drying Gel is added to oil colours, it increases transparency without causing the flow out and leveling of brushstrokes as when adding oil to paint.
In the past, before soluble liquid driers were developed, metallic driers could only be dissolved and thus made effective by reacting the metal salt or oxide (such as litharge or manganese borate) with the oil at high temperature. It was, therefore, necessary to heat or "boil" the oil if you wanted an oil that already contained a drier. Pale drying gel is made by heating raw linseed oil at a low temperature to slightly polymerize it and adding liquid driers.
Pale Drying Gel is fast drying. This is the best way to speed up the drying of your oil paint. Add small amounts to your grinding oil when making oil colors, or add to tube oil paint to promote faster drying. Add to painting mediums and oil colors to speed drying without the danger of adding excessive amounts of driers. This is a good substitute for "black oil" and driers.
Use turpentine, spike oil, or mineral spirits as the solvent for oil painting mediums and brush and studio clean-up.
Add directly to your paint on your palette to give it transparency without thinning its consistency. Add to pigments or extenders to thicken the gel to create impasto effects that do not sink in.
To make your own paint with Pale Drying Gel, add directly to pigment powder until a stiff paste is obtained (the consistency of a thick paste). Grind the paste with a muller on a flat surface before storing it in a collapsible tube.
