Daler-Rowney Artist Oil Colours

Daler-Rowney Artist Oil Colours
Click here to see how Daler Rowney Oils Colours Made

Artists Oil Colour is professional artist quality paint, designed for maximum durability and performance and made using only the very best materials available. The finest pigments available are used regardless of cost – to ensure absolute perfection for the discerning artist. Daler Rowney established in 1783 and remain today one of the worlds leaders in artist materials.

Tradition meets technology in the manufacture of Daler-Rowney oil colours to create the firm smooth texture, glossy surface and pure lightfast colour demanded by discerning artists.

The precise formulation of individual colours requires a perfect balance of oil content and high quality pigment, finely ground to release the full intensity of the colour and ensure complete dispersion.

Only the finest quality pigments, regardless of cost, go into Artists' Quality Oil Colours. Every batch is rigorously tested for consistency of tint, texture and performance, even in the most extreme conditions.

The same precision and care goes into the manufacture and testing of Georgian Oils - one of the world's favourite oil colours.

To maintain their economical uniform price across all colours in the Georgian range, technicians have identified high performance alternatives to some of the more expensive pigments used in Artists' Quality Oils.

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How are Daler-Rowney Artist Oil Colours Made?

Oil colour starts with the blending of carefully weighed pigments and drying oil, which all undergo rigorous quality checks before they are allowed in the factory, let alone the paint.

Most oil colours are made from refined linseed oil, which comes from flax, but sunflower oil is used for whites, because it's less prone to yellowing.

Pigments come from a variety of sources, ranging from natural earth pigments to man-made organic pigments.

Once the oil colour has been mixed it looks like a thick paste, but if you looked at it under an electron microscope you would see pieces of pigment of different sizes floating in the oil.

To release the most brilliant colour, the pigment is ground to a very small and even particle size, using a triple-roll mill which replaced grinding by hand some 150 years ago. Not only does it save time and muscle power, it also gives consistent quality paint of the highest standard.

When triple-roll-mills were introduced they were made of granite, but more modem versions are steel. The mill is made of three cylinders, positioned one behind the other, with a small gap between.

The back and the front cylinders roll in an opposite direction to the middle roller, and at a different speed, crushing the pigment to supermicron fineness. All colours go through the mill at least twice and some up to six times.

Quality Control
A sample of milled colour is checked by Quality Control against standards going back five years and more to make sure that the tint, consistency, pigment size and density are to specification.

Colour checking is done by eye. Just as a 'nose' in the perfume business is finely trained to smell, so our technicians have a highly trained "eye". No colour can go any where in the factory until it has passed these tests.

Once approved, it is packed into aluminium tubes, which are made to the same standard as those used in pharmaceutical industry. Each is coated inside to ensure that the aluminium cannot react with the colour.

Colour is fed into the bottom of the tube, which already has its cap in place. The ends are squeezed together and folded twice. A four-digit date code, stamped into the crimped end, identifies each batch in the unlikely event that it is returned.

Finally, it is automatically labelled. Though the tube is now ready for dispatch, quality control has not finished with it yet. No-one can tell who will buy it, or what conditions it might meet.

To make sure that the paint performs equally well from the Amazon to Antarctica, a sample from each batch goes into a heat-freeze cabinet for two weeks where it is subjected to temperature swings between -40'C and +40'C.

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Artists and Georgian Oils are made in the same way, to the same high standards. The main difference between them lies in the choice and strength of pigments. For Artists' Oils only the finest pigments available are used, regardless of cost.

The Georgian range includes some organic alternatives, indicated by the term 'hue' after the colour name. These are chosen carefully to provide a high degree of permanence and to match the hues of the more costly metallic pigments.

The Georgian range, offers excellent quality at a uniform price across the colour range and gives the opportunity to learn and experiment.