The emergence of new oil paint talents in the United States is due in large part to the United States' international trade status. Williamsburg originated in the mid-80s of the last century, relying on convenient trade conditions, importing pigment raw materials from dozens of countries around the world. After the death of the founder in 2009, Williamsburg was acquired by the well-known acrylic paint manufacturer Golden, and broadened its sales channels, and now its oil paint color number has surpassed the old Netherlands, reaching 178 colors, including 127 colors of a single pigment, painters can find enough favorite colors in one stop.
The medium for Williamsburg oil paints is a standard combination, with regular colors with refined linseed oil and light colors with safflower oil, which generally have a creamy, easy-to-handle texture, most of which dry completely in 1-7 days, and some of the light-colored colors that are responsible for the final glazing take 5-21 days. Among the 178 colors, except for some pearlescent colors and imported natural colors that are not subject to the ASTM light fastness test, the rest of the colors are only alizarin red and alizarin yellow that are not lightfast, and the overall durability is still excellent in view of the huge base of 178 colors.
After being acquired by Golden, the Williamsburg founder's team was retained intact without any change in pigment quality. The prefix for oil paints is "handmade" and the paints are ground in small batches of no more than 5 gallons (18.9 liters) at a time to ensure precise quality control. Depending on the pigment, Williamsburg classifies the grinding accuracy into four types: very fine, fine, medium and coarse, with decreasing gloss, to medium thickness pigments that are completely matte. The pigment with the largest particle size has a coarse feeling visible to the naked eye, and the particle itself becomes part of the texture, and because the coarsely ground pigment is a transparent pigment, it can refract the underlying color.
The presence of transparent coarsely abrasive pigments is associated with Williamsburg founder Carl Plansky himselfImpressionism in the veinHis paints are inspired by Monet, Cézanne and Matisse, and he pursues strong contrasts between light and shadow or color layers. However, coarse grinding is not the mainstream method of making oil paints, and there are only 6 colors of coarse grinding in Williamsburg, most of which are still fine grinding.
His fascination with French painters led Williamsburg to import a large number of natural earth colors from France, occupying nearly 20 places in the color chart, in pursuit of the color style of Monet's time. Italy has also supplied no less than 10 kinds of natural earth colors to Williamsburg, and Williamsburg has launched a 10-color 37ml set for these two types of imported earth colors, selling for about 700-1000 yuan. In addition, natural colors from various regions, such as Persian rose, courbet green, Cyprus orange, Montserrat orange and Turkish brown, are also important specialty colors of Williamsburg.
In general, Williamsburg handmade oil paints contain a large number of inorganic pigments, and the overall color system is opaque, and there are 40 kinds of transparent and translucent colors. Most of the imported pigments are not high-grade, in a total of 8 grades of pigments are only concentrated in the lower 2-3 grades, and the price of all pigments is not high, 37ml from 10-46 US dollars, or 70-310 yuan.
