Abstract: A painting medium for artists is provided and is an essentially homogeneous admixture of raw drying oil and polymerized drying oil produced by mixing together in a heated state. A thinned version of this medium is provide by mixing an essential oil or alcohol solvent with the essentially homogeneous mixture of raw and polymerized drying oil. The essentially homoge-neous mixture of raw and polymerized drying oil is combined with an essential oil or solvent based varnish to produce an artist medium with improved drying properties permitting successive coats of the medium at be applied in relatively short periods of time without the coats or layers bleeding into one another.

Abstract: Amber-based drying oil varnish of improved clarity, colorless and transparency characteristics is provided by a process in which coarsely comminuted amber particles are first heated in drying oil until the amber particles soften, swell and rise to the surface of the heated drying oil, the hot amber particles are strained from the hot drying oil which has become discolored and is discarded, the hot strained amber particles are then finely comminuted to a powder in a small amount of hot drying oil and thereafter, after the addition of additional hot drying oil to the finely comminuted amber powder, the resulting admixture is heated to a temperature at which the amber powder melts and fuses into the heated drying oil to form an essentially homogeneous varnish solution.