wo oil paints with the same colour name and the same tube size can behave like different materials on the same canvas. One holds a ridge off the brush; the other settles flat within the hour. The difference is not the colour and not the price — it is pigment load, the body the maker builds into it, and how the film dries.
If you are stocking an oil paint set for an art-supply programme, a studio or a school, those three variables decide whether the range gets reordered. This is what each one does.
Pigment load is the first thing to specify
Pigment load is the proportion of colour to binder in the tube. It is what a painter means when a colour feels strong or thin.
A high-load oil paint covers with less material and keeps its intensity when it is thinned. A low-load paint still works, but the painter uses more of it to reach the same depth, and a thin colour thinned further turns transparent earlier in the process.
For a wholesale range, the practical question is consistency. Every colour in an oil paint set should carry a comparable load, so a painter can mix across the set without relearning the ratios colour by colour. Ask for the load to be held across the range, not just in the primaries.
Body: what makes pasty paint pasty
“Pasty” is the word buyers use and the word on the tube — oil colour pasty paint, or oil color pasty paint in the American spelling — and it describes how the paint stands up.
A pasty oil paint holds a mark. The stroke keeps a ridge, the brush keeps a load, and the painter can move material around the canvas instead of pushing a film flat. That body comes from the way the pigment is wet out and milled, not from adding a thickener; a range thickened after milling looks pasty in the tube and collapses on the canvas.
This is the property most often missed in a sample. A dab on a card tells you the colour. It does not tell you whether the paint holds a ridge, so press a stroke and look at it edge-on.
Drying time, and why a full range should not dry at one speed
Oil paint dries by oxidation, and pigments do not all oxidise at the same rate. Earth colours tend to move faster than the deeper organic colours. That is not a defect; it is chemistry, and a range that ignores it makes layering harder than it needs to be.
Two consequences for a wholesale buyer. First, a set sold to beginners should be built so that the range dries at a broadly comparable pace — otherwise the painter’s first week is spent waiting on two tubes. Second, an oil paint for canvas used in a programme needs a consistent film: a paint that dries too fast over a slower layer will crack, and it will crack after the student has gone home.
Ask for the drying window, not just “fast” or “slow”. A number, in hours, across the colours you are buying.
Specs: 12ml and 9ml are different buyers
Tube volume is a merchandising decision before it is a technical one.
12ml oil paint is the working size. It carries a class or a studio through a term, it fits the standard 12-colour layout, and it is the size a distributor can put in a mid-priced oil pigment paint set without the unit price running away.
9ml oil colour is the trial size. It exists to lower the price of entry and to let a buyer test the range before committing. It is the right format for a first oil paint set for beginners and the wrong format for a studio that already knows what it uses.
Tube size Who it is for Colour count that works
12ml oil paint Class, studio and term-length use 12 as the default, 18 to extend
9ml oil colour Trial and price-of-entry buyers 12, kept to the working colours
A range that carries both sizes lets one purchase order cover two buyers. That is usually worth more than a deeper colour count in one size.
Colour count: 12 is a spec, not a compromise
An oil paint 12 color set is the industry’s default for a reason. Twelve tubes cover the mixing a beginner needs, keep the layout readable, and make the unit price defensible. A 12-colour set with a consistent pigment load outperforms a 24-colour set with an uneven one, every time — because the second set makes the painter stop and think between strokes.
If you want to extend the range, extend it with an oil paint set for beginners in the working size, not with more colours in a format nobody reorders.
What to check before the container lands
① The tube. A tube that splits at the shoulder loses the order. Check the crimp and the shoulder on the actual tube, filled.
② Cap seal. Oil paint oxidises in the tube. A cap that does not seal turns the top of the tube into a skin and the rest of it into a complaint.
③ Load consistency across colours. Sample the darkest and the lightest in the range, not the two you can see from the box.
④ Film behaviour. Lay a fast colour over a slow one and let it sit. Cracking shows up in days, not months.
Sourcing a bulk oil paint range
Ask for the pigment load, the drying window and the tube specification as three separate figures. As a bulk oil paint buyer, a supplier who quotes one number for “an oil paint set” has not costed the range.
Ask what the manufacturer holds across the range rather than what one colour can do. An oil paint manufacturer will answer that in one message — and an artist oil paint wholesale line should be able to show the same load figure for every colour it lists, not just for the primaries.
And ask for the documentation that covers the market you are selling into, with the report number attached — not a logo on a catalogue page. We would rather forward a report than describe one.
Xin Bowen is a Chinese art-materials manufacturer founded in 2008, supplying wholesalers, brand agents, art-supply retailers and school programmes. Brush production goes back further than the brand — our brush lines have been running in Jiangxi since 1988 — and the company and its distribution operation are based in Yiwu, Zhejiang, with three factories including our art-pigment plant in Ningbo, where the oil colour line is made.
If you are building an oil paint range for a market, send us the sizes, the colour count and the canvas the range is aimed at, and we will quote it item by item — MOQ, carton quantity and lead time included.
📩 pm@tengyuanbrush.com ｜ +86 153-3692-1170 (WhatsApp)
👉 https://www.xinbowen.com/contact-us/
