What kind of mediums or additives can I add to my oil paint to give it a sticky/stringy quality that won’t also cause the paint to level? The use of bodied oils provides the stickyness and stringiness, but levels too much.
Marble dust is one thing I’ve tried that seems to help somewhat, but I also want to thin the consistency of the paint, which degrades the stringiness that the marble dust adds. So maybe my diluting agent needs to somehow add/retain stringiness?
I achieved a nice, ropy body adding 10% marbledust to titanium white tube oils, then adding a small amount of stand oil with a palette knife. The resulting mixture was long-bodied with sinuous ribbons when brushed. It’s important to achieve a homogenous distribution with the marbledust first, because it’s a lot harder to work the paint once stand oil has been added. I think a small pile could be mixed with a wide, flat palette knife, but a larger pile (enough to fill a tube) will require a muller to reduce clusters of powder.
An alkyd-based gel medium may help retain ropiness better than liquid. In particular, some of the alkyd gels sold in tubes are good for retaining paint body.
