R & F Pigment Sticks

R&F Pigment Sticks® are oil paint with enough wax for the paint to be molded into stick form. They allow the painter to draw or paint directly onto a surface without brushes, palettes, paint tubes, or solvents. We use only the basic traditional materials: natural wax, linseed oil, and pigment. The result is an oil stick with a lipstick soft consistency.

Pigment Sticks® have none of the additives, extenders, substitutes, or facilitators that are commonly used in industrial production. While the use of these adulterants can save time and reduce cost, they lower the quality of the paint. To do without them it is necessary to create a very precise balance of the ingredients. Our formulas are complex and our manufacturing is labor-intensive, handmade in small batches, carefully milled and molded.

Pigment Sticks® are excellent as stand-alone painting and drawing tools. They are a wonderful bridge between drawing and painting and their very nature causes artists to loosen up, use more color, and be spontaneous and gestural. And anyone who has spent hours trying to mix colors with only nine or ten printmaking inks will find our palette of 91 colors very liberating. Their immediacy, and mark making ability afford an endless range of options.

Benefits to Working with Pigment Sticks®

• They can be thinned with turpentine or mineral spirits.
• They can be worked with mediums by dipping them into stand oil, linseed oil, alkyd mediums, or resin gels.
• They can be mixed alongside tube oils or used to draw over dried oil paintings.
• Pigment Sticks® can be manipulated with a paint knife until the paint is a buttery consistency, so that it can be brushed or knifed onto the surface. This method can be used to mix colors on the palette or in the painting.