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R&F Pigment Sticks: oilpaint in stick form

Date: 11-05-2023
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We heard you! Artists have been crying out for oil sticks, so we searched the world for the best, and now offer you the most delicious range of 103 colours from R&F Paints in the USA. R&F Pigment Sticks are oilpaint made with a small amount of wax so they can be moulded into stick form. They allow drawing and painting directly onto a surface without the clutter of brushes, palettes, paint tubes, or solvents. R&F use only the basic traditional materials: natural wax (beeswax & plant wax), linseed oil, and pigment. The recipes are complex and labour-intensive; they are handmade in small batches, carefully milled and moulded to produce the world’s finest oil stick: 103 gorgeous colours with a lipstick soft consistency.

 

R&F Pigment Sticks provide a comprehensive palette of genuine artist colours in full strength and delicate tints. They come in protective tubes, wrapped in wax paper, with just a small plastic end-wrap for easy access to the colour. The label contains plenty of information, such as colour, pigmentation, transparency/opacity, and price group.

 

R&F Pigment Sticks are made in the small town of Kingston in upstate New York, not that far from Golden Paints – must be something arty in the air up there!


As you’ve probably seen on other art materials, colours such as cadmium, cobalt, and chromium oxides carry a warning. These colours do not represent a threat in general use, but through inhalation by spraying or sanding dust, eating the colour, and absorption through cuts on skin. While residue from these oil sticks is easily washed from hands using soap, using gloves protects your skin and keeps you clean.


You can pop the sticks back in the tube for storage and travel.

 

R&F Pigment Sticks offer a very immediate way to apply colour. Simply rub straight onto your painting support and colour spreads smooth and soft directly from the stick. With no need for brushes, you are both drawing and painting at once, quickly laying colour down with plenty of gesture in your markmaking.

Pigment Sticks can be used alone on canvas, panel and paper, or over existing oilcolour paintings to add a dramatic or delicate drawing component to your work. Their spontaneous application gives a vitality to painting, and their colour strength makes for a magic drawn line.

 

The protective skin on the R&F Pigment Sticks forms after several days to prevent the stick from drying out. Unlike other brands, this skin is very thin, breaking with the first pressure against your ground or easily wiped from the stick with a paper towel. Waste not want not – this skin incorporates easily into the paint surface with a bit of pressure from your painting knife.

 

With their direct application, working with these sticks can be extremely fast. The colour is slick and soft, and they blend together beautifully, yet this also allows layers to be quickly built up. Give it a little more elbow action and the colour carves back into the surface. This speed of use makes Pigment Sticks perfect for outdoor painting and life drawing techniques, as well as more involved studio use.

The use of natural waxes in R&F Pigment Sticks provides great film strength, and they dry into a durable surface, with similar drying times to oilcolour. Earth colours dry quickly, while phthalo and cadmium colours usually take a few days, and some colours like Lamp Black are very slow (Ivory Black is a quicker option). Drying times are longer during winter.

 

Though they most immediately lend themselves to a direct drawing style approach, Pigment Sticks can be very versatile. Thick passages of impasto are created by building up the waxy surface with deft turns of the wrist, and utilising the accumulation of the thin skin on the sides of the stick. Smoother areas are made with a painting knife (the cranked handle version of a palette knife), spreading the soft colour and pressing it into the ground. A painting knife can also create sgraffito effects by scraping through the paint layer. And while there is no need to use a brush, more subtle effects can be made by further manipulating the applied colour with stiff brushes such as Chuneo or hog hair.

For large areas, the jumbo 100ml Pigment Stick is quicker and much cheaper ml per dollar. Blending Medium is another great way to save costs. Slice some Pigment Stick into Blending Medium at whatever ratio you want.


For more complex processes, R&F Pigment Sticks can smooshed with a paint knife until the paint is a buttery consistency, then brushed or knifed onto the surface. This method can be used to mix colours on the palette or in the painting. They can be thinned with turpentine or mineral spirits, worked with oilcolour mediums by dipping them into stand oil, linseed oil, alkyd mediums, or resin gels. They can be mixed alongside tube oils or used to draw over dried oil paintings; and the Blending Sticks can be worked into a colour to increase its transparency or to blend two colours together on the painting.

By pushing the Pigment Stick into the Blending Medium, you will gradually achieve a smooth mixture that can then be spread with your knife onto your ground. Due to the colour strength of Pigment Sticks, you can extend them to any proportion with Blending Medium and still have the brilliance of a true artist’s colour.

 

R&F Pigment Sticks are also great for monoprinting. Their portability came in handy at the recent Printopia Festival, where I managed to pull some prints using Pigment Sticks directly onto a GelliPlate balanced on my lap. The plates cleaned up easily with a few drops of linseed oil to wipe off the colour residue, followed by some soap at the sink.


These sticks are gorgeous. Lipstick smooth, quick and direct, with R&F Pigment Sticks you’re holding brilliant colour right in your hand.

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