I spent three weeks waiting for an area of my oil painting to dry and got fed up. I tried using linseed oil, stand oil (a joke to work with), bleached linseed oil, turpentine (like huffing gasoline for eight hours), odorless mineral spirits (just as bad as turps), Liquin Original and Liquin Fine Detail. Out of all of them, Liquin Fine Detail worked best.

Liquin Fine Detail is such a useful tool that makes the oil paint more fluid, as well as dry faster. It is created by Winsor & Newton. I worked with Liquin Original before, and it was thick, smelled bad, and it made me nauseous. I know many oil painters who are addicted to the scent of Liquin and turpentine. For some reason, Liquin Fine Detail isn’t as noxious.

Liquin made my paints dry within days, and in most cases, overnight, depending on the thickness of the oil paint. Some of you will like the fact that oil paint takes forever and a day to dry. Those of you who switched from acrylic paints to oil paints, the oil paint drying times can drive you bonkers. Liquin makes oil painting the best of both worlds, the paint dries slow enough to think and blend, yet dries fast enough not to be frustrating.

In order to use Liquin Fine Detail, it is easy, just put it in a sealable dipper cup, and dip the brush before dipping in the oil paint. Yes, it will get dirty, however, the paint settles to the bottom quickly, leaving the top pure Liquin.