Opus Essential Oil Colours (review)

I give this oil paint 8 out of 10 acorns.


A friend gave me a squeeze... of oil paints so I brought them home in my make-shift clove box  .

The colours of Opus oil colours I sampled are
Flake White (hue?) - PW6 - semi opaque
Yellow Ochre - PY43 - opaque
Quinacridone Violet - PV19 - transparent
Prussian Blue - PB27 - transparent

At least, that's what I wrote in my notes.  I think I missed "Hue" for the flake white the real stuff would have PW1 and is uncommon here.  

My first impressions are that the paint is creamy.  Not stiff like Old Holland, but closer to W&N style texture.  There is no binder separation in the colours I sampled.  All four colours had very similar texture and at first glance, are nicely pigmented.  The tubes gave transparency and pigment information.  I forgot to check for lightfastness.  

I also get the feeling this paint is designed to work with medium.  (spoilers, a scant three drops of refined linseed oil were ample for this painting. )

Opus is a brand I'm very fond of.  Childhood memories of the pilgrimage to Vancouver (BC, Canada) and driving under the mass of bridges to find our way to the magical world of Granville Island, home of art.  I don't know if that was still their only shop or if they had started expanding to other locations in British Columbia by then.  It was very much a part of my childhood and some of my best memories are from those trips.  


But can it paint a chicken?

I didn't get much paint as I didn't want to be greedy, so a small chicken it is.  



This chicken is my go-to comfort painting.  I seem to always pick him when sampling a new paint.  And I wish I had told myself that before choosing the colours, as Indian Yellow would have been a much better yellow for this painting.  But yellow ochre it is, so let's see if it can paint a chicken.

But wait, why is the canvas black?

Two reasons: I want to see how the transparent and opaque colours interact with the black ground (black coloured canvas) and because it was the only small canvas I had to hand.  It turned out pretty neat.   I might have to try a black ground more often.

And of course, I begin by seeing what kind of black I can mix from these three primary.



Not too hard.  The yellow ochre has a bit of a milky quality to it.  Sort of cooler than I'm used to.  But it is natural yellow ochre instead of PY42, so it's normal to have some variation depending on where the pigment comes from.  I'm excited when paints have personality.  It gets my brain is buzzing with ideas on how to use this to my advantage.

Looking back, yellow ochre was a good choice for the black canvas as it's nice to have an opaque yellow helping out.

I also mixed up some reds with yellow ochre and the violet.  The quinacridone violet has some lovely transparency to it, so I decided to test some mixes and see what it does.



Just look at that.  It glows but lets the black shine through.  This is going to be an awesome glazing colour!  

I can also tell at this point that I'm not going to be matching the colours of the real chicken with this limited palette.  So I aim for values (the darks and lights) instead of fussing about the colours too much.  

But this brings up one of the reasons why I love this chicken for limited palette challenges - he has two distinctly different reds.  The face and the feathers.  That's not always easy to paint when there is only one purple and no red on my palette.  At this stage, I'm already wondering if I can pull it off with these colours.



Maybe there is hope!

And I'm digging this green.   Yellow ochre, a touch of Prussian, then white to make a creamy mint colour.  

This is the first time paying attention to the white and I am impressed.  It's not overwhelming blue like most Titanium whites I've worked with.  It has a comfortable amount of pigmentation but not so much that it bullies the other colours into becoming milky.  But it also doesn't shy away from being white like Winton white does.  This Opus flake white is like a goldilocks white.  I really want to get more of this and put it through its paces as this is the first white oil paint I have real affection for.  I'm going to try mixing it in with some of my other mixes so far and see what happens.



There is something lovely going on with this white.  It increases the opacity of the transparent colours without making them too milky.  I'm starting to see why it's called "semi opaque".  I wonder what other qualities it has that earns the name "flake"?  It doesn't feel particularly long/stringy.  It's basically the same texture as the other colours.  There is more to learn here.  But I don't have enough paint to find out just yet.

A bit more blending and fussing about.  And I've finally reached the limit of what this paint can do for this chicken.



It's the eyes.  With this colour selection, I cannot get anything bright orange enough.  I have some indian yellow in a different brand, and it's always interesting to see how brands interact.  1980 is a student brand and I'm worried this Opus oil colour will overwhelm it.  But they behave kindly to the new yellow and it's quick to mix the colours I need.



I love how Indian Yellow and quinacridone violet mix.  So pretty.  So many possibilities!  

Because using a colour in one spot looks a bit weird, I put a few tiny dabs of the Indian-violet mix around the painting.  A bit more yellow ochre full strength in the feathers.  Fussed with it a bit more until I got to good enough.



I'm chuffed.  This is one heck of a chook.

The Opus oil paint worked with me and made a very enjoyable chicken painting expierence.  I left the highlights quite bright as I feel this chook would benefit from another glazing layer on the wattles and comb. I would like to improve the texture there too, but I am very happy with what I could do with this first layer.  I put the leftover paints back in my make-shift clove box and popped them in the freezer.  So little paint remains, it's unlikely to keep, but hope is a beautiful thing.


So why not twn acorns if I love it so much?

Part of it is personal preference.  I'm a solvent-free painter so I like a paint that doesn't need a lot of medium.  This turned out not to need as much as I expected.  And maybe my canvas was too thirsty and that could have biased my view of the paint behaviour.  It just felt like if I'm not doing thick impasto layers, the paint wanted some sort of medium.

The other challenge is harder to describe and again, purely personal preference.  How to explain?  When I work with handmade paints (and some poorly made paints), the pigment has a big influence on how the paint behaves.  I LOVE this because, coming from a watercolour background, I enjoy when the pigments add their own opinions to the painting. Something like Beam Watercolours. I guess I get a bit disappointed when the paints are all the same texture... even though this makes painting easier.  I'm just weird that way.  Most people would find this a bonus rather than a detriment.

Or maybe I just choose four colours with the same texture.  

The last, and biggest issue I have with this specific paint (at the time of writing this review) is the lack of pigment and ingredient information on the website.  The nearest Opus store is a significant journey from my farm, so I am more likely to buy online than in person.  I like being able to choose paint by pigment as well as by name.  Names have no standardization in painting.  Burnt Sienna could be PBr7 or a mix of PBk9 and PR101 (black and red).  The two variations have dramatic difference in drying time and behaviour and that's not the only combinations of pigments that can make up "burnt sienna".  Again, part of my watercolour background, but I do obsess over pigment information more than most.  It's the thing that stopped me from buying this brand in the past, although I have seriously considered them on more than one occasion.  I really like to know the ingredients, safety data sheet, and all that jazz when buying a new brand of paint.  

The safety data sheet comes in handy when the chicken eats the paints - prussian blue tastes the best, apparently.   Thankfully he's grown out of that phase, but still...  I like to know the risks.

These paints are at risk of dethroning M Graham as my favourite.  Although the longer open time of M Graham is still a big plus for my painting style.  Opus oil paints showed no signs of tacking up in the 12 hours it was on the palette (even after being in the clove box).  This makes me very happy as I like paint to stay open for 3 or more days.  

"Open time" is the time between putting the paint on the palette and when it gets too sticky on the canvas that working with is risks damaging the paint already there.  When the open time is over, the painting has to go sit in a corner and dry until I can work on it again.  My life is complicated, and a long open time makes me happy.  



So who are these paints for?

They are a bit pricy for just starting out with oil painting.  But it would be perfect for someone just upgrading to professional paints as the Opus oil colours are extremely well behaved.  With the pigment load, I think that most professional painters would be more than happy with these paints.  Compared to other professional grades available where I live (off the left coast of Canada), these are a more affordable professional quality paint.  Good value for the price.  

I didn't get the lightfastness information, but looking at the pigments of the paints I sampled, I can extrapolate these four colours have excellent lightfastness.  They would be fine to use in a painting that needs to last generations or is for sale.  


Opus Art Supplies is a Canadian company, and Opus Oil Paints is an independent BC business that has been run by BC residents for 50 years!  This connection to my local area makes me have extra love for these paints.  I'll definitely be adding a few to my next order, especially that delightful flake white hue.  

Drying time appears to be quicker than I expected.  I could probably paint the next layer today (a week later) if I really want to,  but I'm going t wait 10 days to be sure.

I didn't check on the clove box.

Here he is again!



I got the clove box out of the freezer and was thinking of painting another layer.  But also, now I see him after a few days away, I think he looks fantastic like this.

I also have almost zero quin violet left.  

What do you think?  Should I try to improve him, meaning I would need to crack open different paints, or just leave it as it is as an example of what these opus paints can do?  

I got my own tube of flake white hue and some mars black.  The white is just as lovely as in the review.

The mars black in this brand less so.  It's less pigmented than I expected and almost a tiny bit transparently creamy when mixed.  But I've only used high end mars black oil paint before, so I might have too high an expectation.  It also has that horrific smell that all mars black has, only thankfully not so strong.  

Although, I begin to suspect that I'm the only one who can smell that pigment. No one else seems to notice.