Oil Paint to Acrylic Equivalents?

[SparrowMarie]

It was suggested that I take an online Bob Ross painting class by my MIL as something to do while stuck inside. The kit and ticket for the class are like 60$. It was suggested that I just use acrylics and slow-dry medium. I think this is a great idea. I plan on using my Reaper paints on some heavy card stock or water color paper to achieve this. 

 

My problem is trying to find acrylic paints that are equivalent colors to the oils that Ross used. Anyone have any leads or ideas about a color chart or list or something?

 

[R2ED]

Hobby lobby has a cool mixing book for colors and a nifty color chart.  

 

There are also windsor newton acrylic paints that are heavy pigment that should give you a great texture like oil paints, but not the same drying time. 

[SparrowMarie]

5 minutes ago, R2ED said:

There are also windsor newton acrylic paints that are heavy pigment that should give you a great texture like oil paints, but not the same drying time. 

 

Thanks! I am just looking for like color names to compare to Reaper. I don't want to have to buy all new paints that I may never use again.

[R2ED]

The app Paint Rack shows a pretty helpful color spread.  Use that to find the tone you want, then search it on reaper. 

 

I misunderstood you meant reaper paints only.  Thought you meant acrylic in general.  Whoops. Will reapers be thick enough for Bob Ross techniques? 

[SparrowMarie]

1 minute ago, R2ED said:

The app Paint Rack shows a pretty helpful color spread.  Use that to find the tone you want, then search it on reaper. 

 

I misunderstood you meant reaper paints only.  Thought you meant acrylic in general.  Whoops. Will reapers be thick enough for Bob Ross techniques? 

 

I am hoping that mixed with the right medium I can get the right working time out of it which is what I need. I'm not sure how thick it is matters for this? I could be totally wrong. I don't plan on using a conventional canvas so I think for what I'll be doing it should be fine. 

[Clearman]

My suggestions would be

 

1) Cadmium Yellow Light - 9409 Canary Yellow

2) Cadmium Yellow Medium - 9408 Candlelight Yellow

3) Cadmium Orange - 9406 Sunrise Orange

4) Cadmium Red Light - 9405 Volcanic Orange

5) Quinacridone Red - 9094 Clear Red

6) Quinacridone Magenta - 9098 Clear Magenta

7) Dioxazine Purple - 9098 Clear Magenta + 9099 Clear Purple

8) Ultramarine Blue - 9187 Ultramarine Shadow

9) Phthalo Blue - 9607 Phthalo Blue

10) Cobolt Teal - 9416 Spectral Glow

11) Phthalo Green - 9606 Phthalo Green

12) Yellow-green - 9248 Moth Green

 

These are approximates from other sources if used and cannot necessarily speak to any pigment reactions.

 

[Wren]

Is your goal to match Reaper acrylic paints to the colours of Bob Ross oil paints?

 

That's going to be a challenge for a couple of different reasons. One is that neither company makes public pigment information. That's not unusual for miniature paints. It is less usual for quality artist oil paints. Or even student grade oil paints. At this stage in time the Bob Ross company is less selling general painting lessons and more selling painting via our system lessons, so they're motivated to get you to want to use their paint, and not motivated to help you figure out how to use something else even though you're just taking one class to see if you like it.

 

I watched a demo of the Bob Ross system at my local art store back in the before COVID days. They had a full workshop, but I didn't sign up for that. As with the paintings he did on the show, it's all based on putting a coat of white oil paint over the canvas before you start the painting. This stays wet throughout the entire painting, and that is what allows for many of the specific techniques that Bob uses. I think that paint is called Liquid White, so it's not even a standard white oil paint. Probably just has some medium or solvent or something in it, but I don't know exactly what. 

I am pretty sure that adding drying retarder to acrylic paint will not function in the same way, either for that base white layer or the paints in general. Drying retarder can keep your miniature paint 'open' (workable) on your surface for 5-10 minutes, not the length of a painting. Dry times on more fluid paints like miniature paint or paints which are applied in thinner layers are faster than thick tube paints applied in thicker applications. The acrylic brand Golden Open paints are going to be the ones that function most like oil paints. They have been formulated with drying retarder and other properties to stay workable for a long time. But they'd be as expensive or more as buying a Bob Ross set. (And I really do mean just the paints specifically called Golden Open, Golden's other brands of acrylic paint dry quickly like other acrylics.)

Basically I think you will find it frustrating and very challenging to try to do what they're doing in the class in the same way they're doing it. If you do try it, I recommend that you scale your canvas down from the larger size. You can also try to work in sections. It's possible to 'float' a layer of drying retarder over an area of a painting and wet blend on top of that, but the layer probably won't stay wet as long as oil paint would. I am normally pretty reluctant to recommend buying super cheap paint, but I think you'd get closer to what the class is using with a set of cheap Reeves or Talens oil paint from the craft store or Amazon than in trying to make acrylic paint act like oil paint. 

Note that per ounce, miniature paints probably aren't that much cheaper than artist paints. You're just buying smaller containers, so you can get a lot more colours for less money. (And obviously using something you already own is cheaper than buying something new.) Depending on the pigments used, a 2oz jar of Golden's new SoFlat Matte (that sounds a lot like they reinvented miniature paint) is $10-25. A Reaper bottle is 1/2 oz for $3.70. Multiply that by four, and the Golden prices aren't crazy. (Which is the other reason I suggest using a smaller canvas if you take the class with Reaper paints so you use a smaller volume of them.)

It sounds like you're less interested in a Bob Ross class specifically than in the general idea of doing a fun online art class? If that is the case, you should be able to find something that uses acrylics that you could use your Reaper paints with more easily. You'd particularly want something with fluid acrylics or acrylic gouache (acryl-gouache is another name). Those will be most similar to Reaper paints, where a general class might be expecting you to have thick tube acrylics that you can do different effects with. Craftsy is an online course site where you can buy individual courses, though these are all prerecorded. Udemy is another site with prerecorded courses like that. Skillshare and Domestika are monthly subscription sites that have tons of prerecorded art classes. It's not quite the same vibe as a live class, but figured I'd put that out there. I'm sure there are live classes with acrylic painting, I'm just not aware of some to recommend.

Another option is to look for a class that looks fun that requires less of an investment of supplies to get started. Something that needs a simple watercolour set or set of watercolour pencils for example.

As far as just the part about matching colours. 
 

I couldn't find any pigment info for Bob Ross paints on Dick Blick's website, and they are pretty thorough about listing that info if they have it. What they also do is post pictures of actual painted swatches, which is very helpful to getting an idea of the colour. So you can look at the colours listed for the class (or in the kit) and compare them to the paints you own to see what looks like it matches the best. Click on the little colour swatch on this page that lists the paint and you'll see a bigger version of the swatch. 

Apologies for the super long post!

[Cyradis]

Sir Cyr's brother set up the family for a paint-along class online for Christmas. They got the thicker tube acrylics, a canvas, and sets of cheap brushes. I didn't feel like getting new stuff (or painting "big") so I followed along the whole time.... painting with my minis paint, on a 2x3in card (was made for watercolors, so a nicer paper, but tiny). I didn't perfectly color match - with that sort of thing you don't need to. A "dark blue" is sufficient without worrying about if it is Ultramarine or Navy or Ocean blue. Just get "dark blue" of some kind and call it good.

 

I couldn't do techniques that required thick paint as much, but I could follow along just fine overall. Was entertaining and my tiny product turned out well. Did use some of my lesser brushes for methods that were brush-abusive; you may want an assortment of junk synthetics. The guy leading the class on Zoom was kinda surprised when it was "everyone show your work" time and I went "tada, it is tiny".

[SparrowMarie]

On 2/18/2021 at 11:06 PM, Wren said:

Is your goal to match Reaper acrylic paints to the colours of Bob Ross oil paints?

 

That's going to be a challenge for a couple of different reasons. One is that neither company makes public pigment information. That's not unusual for miniature paints. It is less usual for quality artist oil paints. Or even student grade oil paints. At this stage in time the Bob Ross company is less selling general painting lessons and more selling painting via our system lessons, so they're motivated to get you to want to use their paint, and not motivated to help you figure out how to use something else even though you're just taking one class to see if you like it.

 

I watched a demo of the Bob Ross system at my local art store back in the before COVID days. They had a full workshop, but I didn't sign up for that. As with the paintings he did on the show, it's all based on putting a coat of white oil paint over the canvas before you start the painting. This stays wet throughout the entire painting, and that is what allows for many of the specific techniques that Bob uses. I think that paint is called Liquid White, so it's not even a standard white oil paint. Probably just has some medium or solvent or something in it, but I don't know exactly what. 

I am pretty sure that adding drying retarder to acrylic paint will not function in the same way, either for that base white layer or the paints in general. Drying retarder can keep your miniature paint 'open' (workable) on your surface for 5-10 minutes, not the length of a painting. Dry times on more fluid paints like miniature paint or paints which are applied in thinner layers are faster than thick tube paints applied in thicker applications. The acrylic brand Golden Open paints are going to be the ones that function most like oil paints. They have been formulated with drying retarder and other properties to stay workable for a long time. But they'd be as expensive or more as buying a Bob Ross set. (And I really do mean just the paints specifically called Golden Open, Golden's other brands of acrylic paint dry quickly like other acrylics.)

Basically I think you will find it frustrating and very challenging to try to do what they're doing in the class in the same way they're doing it. If you do try it, I recommend that you scale your canvas down from the larger size. You can also try to work in sections. It's possible to 'float' a layer of drying retarder over an area of a painting and wet blend on top of that, but the layer probably won't stay wet as long as oil paint would. I am normally pretty reluctant to recommend buying super cheap paint, but I think you'd get closer to what the class is using with a set of cheap Reeves or Talens oil paint from the craft store or Amazon than in trying to make acrylic paint act like oil paint. 

Note that per ounce, miniature paints probably aren't that much cheaper than artist paints. You're just buying smaller containers, so you can get a lot more colours for less money. (And obviously using something you already own is cheaper than buying something new.) Depending on the pigments used, a 2oz jar of Golden's new SoFlat Matte (that sounds a lot like they reinvented miniature paint) is $10-25. A Reaper bottle is 1/2 oz for $3.70. Multiply that by four, and the Golden prices aren't crazy. (Which is the other reason I suggest using a smaller canvas if you take the class with Reaper paints so you use a smaller volume of them.)

It sounds like you're less interested in a Bob Ross class specifically than in the general idea of doing a fun online art class? If that is the case, you should be able to find something that uses acrylics that you could use your Reaper paints with more easily. You'd particularly want something with fluid acrylics or acrylic gouache (acryl-gouache is another name). Those will be most similar to Reaper paints, where a general class might be expecting you to have thick tube acrylics that you can do different effects with. Craftsy is an online course site where you can buy individual courses, though these are all prerecorded. Udemy is another site with prerecorded courses like that. Skillshare and Domestika are monthly subscription sites that have tons of prerecorded art classes. It's not quite the same vibe as a live class, but figured I'd put that out there. I'm sure there are live classes with acrylic painting, I'm just not aware of some to recommend.

Another option is to look for a class that looks fun that requires less of an investment of supplies to get started. Something that needs a simple watercolour set or set of watercolour pencils for example.

As far as just the part about matching colours. 
 

I couldn't find any pigment info for Bob Ross paints on Dick Blick's website, and they are pretty thorough about listing that info if they have it. What they also do is post pictures of actual painted swatches, which is very helpful to getting an idea of the colour. So you can look at the colours listed for the class (or in the kit) and compare them to the paints you own to see what looks like it matches the best. Click on the little colour swatch on this page that lists the paint and you'll see a bigger version of the swatch. 

Apologies for the super long post!

 

No worries! This was very informative. My goal is to make small scale landscapes on small canvases/paper. I'm starting a little bigger since this is something I've never done. But final goal is to get down to like 2" x 2" canvas or paper. I'll check out those classes for acrylic paints, thank you!