Oil Painting Basics: Student vs Professional Grade Paints

Purchasing the wrong kind of oil paint can lead to frustration and confusion. Here I will be explaining the difference between Student and Professional Oil Paints and why Student Paints are of the devil (just kidding, kind of).

Straight out of the tube student and professional paints kind of look similar, but they are not.

On the left of my terrible illustration of a student grade paint, and on the right is a professional grade. Student grades are made with less pigment and have fillers added to them to compensate for the loss of texture. This leaves us with a cheaper paint that doesn't cover the canvas at the same rate as a professional. In the end you will need to use more of it for the same job. The fillers further complicate things, because when different paints are mixed together the fillers don't play nice and you usually end up with mud.

Student paints are a paint company's way of fooling hobbyist into thinking they are getting a deal while stealing from them knowing they will need to use almost double the amount of student paint in order to complete the same job a smaller amount of professional paint would have done.

Be careful not to confuse a brand's student paint with their professional brand. Avoid Winton by Winsor and Newton, Grumbacher Artisan Paints by Grumbacher, 1980 by Gamblin, and Utrecht. Winton, Grumbacher Artisan, and 1980 are their respective company's student brands, and while Utrecht was THE paint to have decades ago, through the years they have been purchased a couple of times over and the quality has suffered.

What do you think? Was I too harsh on student grade paints? Let me know down in the comments.

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This is a rewrite of my original blog post, Paint Brands: Student vs Professional