There's a shelf at the back of the shop with three bottles sitting next to each other: stand oil, dammar varnish, and distilled turpentine. Most customers walk past it without noticing. Occasionally somebody stops, picks up one of the bottles, reads the label, puts it back, and asks me what it's for.
The honest answer is: those three bottles are the recipe for the painting medium that every old master from Rubens to Sargent used. Pre-mixed mediums — Liquin, Galkyd, Miracle Medium, and the rest — are convenient and they have their place. The three-bottle approach is what came before, what those branded mediums were designed to replace, and what serious oil painters still mix from scratch when they want full control over how their paint behaves.
It's not difficult. The classic recipe is roughly one part of each, mixed cold in a clean glass jar. The interesting part is what each ingredient actually does and how adjusting the ratios changes the way the paint behaves on the canvas. Once that clicks, you stop buying mediums for what's written on the label and start mixing them for what you actually want the paint to do that afternoon.
This is the post for painters ready to take that next step.
The three ingredients and what they do
The classical medium is built from three categories of material: an oil (the body), a resin (the structure), and a solvent (the consistency). The exact members of each category can vary — different oils, different resins, different solvents — but the proportions and the logic stay constant. This is the version that became the European standard from roughly the seventeenth century onwards, and the version painters still come back to.
Stand oil
Linseed oil, but not raw. Stand oil is linseed oil that's been heated to around 300°C in the absence of oxygen — a process the Dutch developed in the seventeenth century, which gives it its name (from the Dutch staan, "to stand", because the oil is allowed to stand at temperature). The heat polymerises the oil — links short molecules into longer ones — and changes its behaviour profoundly.
Three things to know about stand oil. It's thicker and more viscous than raw linseed, and a brushstroke laid down with stand oil in the mix smooths itself out as it sits — which is why glazes made with it self-level. It yellows far less than raw linseed (the heat-driven polymerisation removes much of the chemistry that causes the yellowing). And it dries slowly, but to a tougher and more flexible film than raw oil. It's the body of the medium — the part that ends up in the painting.
Dammar varnish
A natural resin dissolved in turpentine. Dammar is harvested from the trees of the Shorea genus, native to Indonesia and Malaysia — collected as tear-like droplets where the bark has been wounded, then dissolved in turpentine to make the varnish form you can buy in a bottle.
In a painting medium, dammar varnish does two jobs. It lifts the gloss and transparency of the paint — glazes built with dammar in the medium have a luminosity you can't quite get from oil alone. And it speeds the drying slightly. The trade-off is that dammar is brittle on its own; it has to be balanced with enough oil to keep the dried film flexible, which is why the classical recipe pairs it with stand oil.
Dammar is also the source of the yellowing concern raised against traditional mediums. The resin oxidises slowly over decades, and modern mediums like Miracle Medium were developed in part to sidestep that. The honest truth is that the yellowing is real but slow — many famous paintings made with dammar still look fine two hundred years on — and the gloss and handling you get from it is hard to match any other way.
Distilled turpentine
The thinner. English Distilled Turpentine is the solvent that brings the medium to a brushable consistency. It evaporates as the painting dries, leaving nothing behind — so it contributes nothing to the finished film except temporary flow. But it does two structural jobs in the recipe that nothing else can. It's the solvent in which the dammar resin is dissolved (only turpentine dissolves dammar fully — Sansodor and Zest-It Citrus Free will not). And it sets how lean or fat the first layers of the painting are.
For more on the solvents and why turpentine specifically is the only true choice in this recipe, see our previous post.
The classical recipe
One part stand oil, one part dammar varnish, one part distilled turpentine. Mixed cold in a clean glass jar with a tight lid.
That's it. The proportions are by volume, not weight — measure with a small graduated cylinder or just by eye. The medium will be a pale golden colour, slightly viscous, and ready to use straight away. Stored sealed and dark, it will keep indefinitely.
Most painters start with small batches: 30ml of each ingredient, which gives you 90ml of finished medium and is enough for several weeks of regular studio work. You use it sparingly — a few drops per brushload, mixed into the paint on the palette, not poured directly onto the painting.
Adjusting the ratios
Once you understand what each ingredient does, you can read the recipe as three independent dials.
More stand oil (say, 2:1:1) → slower drying, glossier surface, more flow in the brushstroke, a more flexible film when dry. Use for final layers and glazing in slow-dry traditional working.
More dammar varnish (1:2:1) → glossier and more transparent (lifts the optical depth of glazes), and drying speeds up a little. The trade-off is brittleness; don't push the dammar much higher without raising the oil to match.
More turpentine (1:1:2) → lean and fast. Used for underpainting and early layers, where you want the paint to settle quickly without contributing much oil to the lower film. Respects the fat-over-lean rule that traditional oil painting depends on.
The discipline most experienced painters end up adopting is to mix three jars rather than one — a "lean" mix for early layers (heavy on turps), a "medium" mix at roughly 1:1:1 for the body of the painting, and a "fat" mix for upper layers and glazes (heavy on stand oil and dammar). Label them, line them up at the back of the bench, work fat-over-lean as you go.
A note on substitutions
Stand oil can be replaced with raw or refined linseed oil — both work, but you give up the slow self-levelling and gain a bit more yellowing risk over time. Dammar is harder to substitute meaningfully; mastic resin behaves similarly but is rarely available at retail. Turpentine cannot be substituted in this recipe — Sansodor will not dissolve the dammar, and Zest-It Citrus Free is unreliable in this role. Standard Zest-It (the citrus version) will dissolve dammar and works as a safer alternative for studio safety, though purists prefer the traditional turpentine for clarity of solution.
Mixing, storing, and using it
Mixing
Use a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid — clean, dry, rinsed of any soap residue. Avoid plastic; turpentine slowly degrades many plastics, and you don't want plasticiser leaching into the medium.
The order matters slightly. Pour the stand oil first — it's the most viscous and hardest to dose accurately, so giving it the empty jar lets you settle it before the others go in. Then the dammar varnish, then the turpentine. Cap the jar and swirl gently to combine. No violent shaking — that introduces air bubbles you'll wait an hour to settle out. Let the jar stand for an hour before first use; the medium will go from cloudy to clear as the air settles.
Storing
Sealed, upright, in a dark cupboard at room temperature. Cool is fine; cold is not — refrigeration thickens the oil enough to make pouring awkward, and it serves no preservation purpose. Light is more the enemy than air; UV degrades the dammar slowly.
Stored properly, the medium will keep indefinitely. It may settle a little over weeks — a gentle swirl sorts it out. If it ever clouds permanently or smells off, something has contaminated it and you're better off starting over.
Using
Decant a small amount into a dipper or palette cup at the start of the session. Don't dip the brush in the main jar — any paint on the brush goes back into the medium and contaminates the whole supply. Whatever you decant for the session, throw away what you don't use; don't pour it back.
A few drops per brushload, mixed into the paint on the palette. Never poured directly onto the painting. Less is more — you want the paint's behaviour to shift, not the paint to dilute into a wash unless you're deliberately working that lean.
Fat-over-lean
The one rule that traditional oil painting depends on. Lower layers must be leaner (less oil, more solvent, faster-drying) than upper layers (more oil, more dammar, slower-drying). Reverse it — fat layer below, lean above — and the upper layer dries first, while the lower layer pulls as it tries to dry beneath. Eventually it cracks through the surface. This isn't theoretical; it's why a meaningful proportion of older oil paintings show craquelure where they shouldn't.
In practice: your "lean" jar (heavy on turps) goes on the early layers. Your 1:1:1 mix carries the body of the painting. Your "fat" jar (heavy on stand oil and dammar) is reserved for glazes and final touches. If you're working alla prima — wet on wet in a single session — the rule still applies in miniature: lay leaner paint first, work fatter as you go.
A safety note
Rags soaked in solvent or oil-based medium can spontaneously combust if left bunched up. Spread them flat to dry, or store in a sealed metal container of water. This is one of the few real fire risks in an oil painter's studio and well worth taking seriously.
When to reach for a ready-made bottle instead
The reason ready-made mediums exist isn't because they're worse than the classical recipe — it's because they solve real problems the recipe doesn't.
Miracle Medium sidesteps the solvent question entirely. If you're painting at home, in a small studio, with kids around, or with respiratory sensitivity, the classical recipe has a 33% turpentine component that you can't really design around. Miracle Medium gives you the body and flow of an oil-based medium with order-of-magnitude lower VOC content and no flammability concerns. For studio safety, it wins outright. The chemistry is in Post 1.
Liquin and Galkyd are alkyd-based mediums — synthetic resin systems that dry significantly faster than the classical recipe. Where a stand-oil-and-dammar layer might be touch-dry in 24–48 hours, a Liquin layer can be ready to overpaint in 6–12. If you paint in layers and don't want to wait days between sessions, that matters. The trade-off is that alkyds have only been in artists' hands since the 1970s; the long-term archival picture is less settled than for traditional materials. Most conservation evidence so far is positive — but "most" and "settled" aren't the same word.
Convenience is its own argument. Mixing your own takes setup, jars, label-making, and a working understanding of three ingredients. A bottle of ready-made medium opens, pours, and goes back on the shelf. Plenty of accomplished painters use ready-made mediums their whole careers and produce work that will outlast all of us. Buying a bottle isn't a compromise; it's a different set of trade-offs.
Where the classical recipe still wins is in three places. Cost — at retail, the three ingredients work out considerably cheaper per ml of usable medium than the equivalent volume of a ready-made. Control — you can dial your fat-over-lean discipline precisely from layer to layer, in a way no one-formula bottle allows. And a particular quality of optical depth in glazes that some painters find dammar-and-stand-oil delivers and modern alternatives don't quite match. That last one is subjective; some painters feel it strongly, others don't see a difference.
The honest answer is that most working oil painters end up with both on the bench: a ready-made medium for everyday painting where convenience wins, and a small jar of self-mixed traditional medium for the work that needs it. Browse our Oil Painting Solvents and Solvent-Free Oil Painting collections to put together either approach.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use Zest-It instead of turpentine in this recipe?
Standard (citrus) Zest-It will dissolve dammar resin and works as a studio-safer substitute. Zest-It Citrus Free is unreliable in this role, and Sansodor won't dissolve dammar at all. If you do substitute Zest-It for turpentine, give the dammar 24 hours undisturbed before you trust the medium — the resin dissolves more slowly in citrus terpenes than in turpentine.
What's the difference between stand oil and refined linseed oil?
Refined linseed oil is purified raw oil. Stand oil is refined linseed that's been heat-polymerised at high temperature — making it thicker, slower-drying, less yellowing, and the dried film more flexible and glossier. Use stand oil for this recipe; refined linseed will work but gives you less of the qualities the classical medium is prized for.
Can I add Venice turpentine or cobalt drier?
Yes, both are traditional additions. Venice turpentine — which is actually a balsamic resin from larch trees rather than a solvent, despite the name — adds tackiness and gloss; a few drops per session in your "fat" mix is plenty. Cobalt drier accelerates drying significantly; a tiny amount goes a long way and overdoing it causes the upper film to dry far faster than the lower, which is the cracking-pattern problem fat-over-lean is designed to avoid. Use with restraint.
Will the medium yellow over time?
Some, yes. Dammar is responsible for most of it, and the rate varies with how the painting is stored and lit. Modern dammar-free mediums (Miracle Medium and similar) avoid this issue entirely. For most painters the yellowing is acceptable and slow; for conservation-conscious work or very pale palettes, a solvent-free alternative is worth considering.
If you want to talk through what your particular working method needs, drop into the shop on Callender Street or get in touch — happy to help you pick what to start with.
