The 10 Best Oil Paint Sets

The Gamblin Introductory Set is a first real palette in full artist-grade paint, with nine colors that mix almost anything and a primed birch panel to start on. The cadmium yellow and red are the real pigments, not cheaper imitations. Gamblin grinds its colors in refined linseed oil, uses safflower oil for the whites so they stay paler, and leaves out lead, mercury and arsenic. Plan to buy brushes, a medium and a thinner separately.

Students and weekend painters get a complete ten-color palette for little money in the Winsor & Newton Winton Basic set. Winton is the company's student line, and this box covers two blues, a warm red, a pale yellow, earth browns, black and white. The paint is smooth but slightly stiff, which holds thick strokes. Several colors are hues, cheaper stand-ins for cadmium and viridian, so they mix a bit duller. The tubes are small, and the white runs out first.

For painters ready to move past student paint, the Winsor & Newton Artists' Intro set holds ten professional colors, including a bright modern yellow, two blues and an intense green. That range mixes clean greens and violets that hue-based sets struggle to reach, and earth colors round out skin tones. Winsor Blue and Winsor Green are strong phthalo pigments, so a tiny dab goes a long way and can swamp a mix. The tubes are small for professional paint.

Art students on a budget get Gamblin's own pigments in the Gamblin 1980 Oil Colors set. This is the maker's student line, ground the same way as its artist paint but stretched with marble dust. The box pairs eight tubes with a cradled wood panel and a jar of solvent-free gel, a medium that thins paint without turpentine. The filler makes the colors weaker in mixes than full artist grade, so deep darks take more paint.

If turpentine fumes are why you haven't tried oils, the M. Graham Solvent-Free Set is built to skip them. Its five colors are ground in walnut oil with no fillers, and two bottles come along: plain walnut oil to thin the paint and a walnut alkyd medium that speeds drying. Brushes clean up with oil and soap. Five colors make a true primary palette but no earth tones, and walnut oil paint is slow to dry on its own.

Painters who want the richest color from each tube can start with the Michael Harding Introductory Set, made by hand in Wales with no fillers or extenders. The six colors lean warm, with a lake yellow, a scarlet, ultramarine, a deep ochre, burnt umber and white, and the tubes are generous. Michael Harding also sells every color in single tubes, which helps when one runs out. There's no green or black, so you'll mix both.

Shared rooms, kids nearby or poor ventilation make the Winsor & Newton Artisan set worth a look. These are real oils, modified so water thins them and cleans the brushes, with no solvent in the room. Twenty colors give a wide palette, including bright pinks, a purple and two phthalo greens. The paint is stiff straight from the tube, and it dries glossy in some colors and flat in others, so a final varnish helps even it out.

Painters tired of waiting days for a layer to set can try the Sennelier Rive Gauche set. The Paris colormaker grinds this line in safflower oil and says it dries about twice as fast as classic oils while yellowing less over time. Its cadmium colors are modern stand-ins, which keeps the cost down, and the eight tubes come in a box fit for a gift. Quicker drying leaves less time to blend wet paint into wet.

Old Holland has made paint in the Netherlands since 1664, and the Old Holland Classic Intro set is a small taste of its dense, heavily loaded colors. You get a white, a yellow, a red, a magenta, a blue and a brown, enough to judge the paint before buying full tubes. It's stiff, which holds knife marks and thick strokes, but it needs a little oil or medium for smooth layers. The tubes are tiny for the cost.

Built around an old-masters palette, the ZenART Portrait Palette gives eight earthy colors for skin tones, still life and landscapes, with big tubes for the money. It includes a zinc-titanium white, yellow ochre, a vermilion red, a chromium oxide green and raw umber, all in linseed oil, and the box names the pigment in each color. These are traditional oils, not water-mixable. The limited palette can't mix bright greens or purples, and independent reviews of this young brand are scarce.