R&F Pigment Sticks® vs. R&F Drawing Oils™: What's the Difference?

There's something quietly radical about picking up a stick of oil paint and drawing directly onto canvas — no brushes, no palette, no ceremony. That's the freedom R&F Handmade Paints has been offering artists for decades. But with two distinct R&F oil sticks in their lineup — the iconic R&F Pigment Sticks® and the newer R&F Drawing Oils™ — a natural question comes up: what's the difference, and which one do you reach for?

The short answer: both. The longer answer is worth understanding.

At their core, both R&F oil paint sticks share the same fundamental ingredients — linseed oil, natural wax, and pigment. No additives, no extenders, no shortcuts. R&F's formulas are milled and molded by hand in small batches in Kingston, New York. That commitment to material integrity is what puts them in a category of their own.

But how those ingredients are balanced changes everything.

R&F Pigment Sticks® lean toward the oil side — softer, richer, with a consistency closer to lipstick. They're oil paint in stick form, full stop. With 91 colours available, you can work them directly onto canvas, manipulate them with a palette knife into a buttery consistency, blend with oils and mediums, or draw over dried paintings. They're built for painters who want the immediacy of direct mark-making without sacrificing the depth or character of traditional oils.

R&F Drawing Oils™ shift the balance — less oil, more wax — resulting in a harder, more controlled stick. The feel is closer to a drawing tool than a painting one. Designed for sketchbooks, panels, and canvas, they dry to a matte finish rather than the glossier quality of Pigment Sticks®. With 40 colours available across three curated sets — Introductory, Landscape, and Modern — they're built for mark-making, practice, and exploration.

Pigment Sticks® are gestural and expressive. Their softer body encourages loose, spontaneous mark-making at scale — blocking in colour, building texture, working wet-into-wet. Thinned with turpentine or mineral spirits, they open up into fluid washes. Worked with stand oil or alkyd medium, they deepen and flow. They're the kind of tool that loosens you up.

Key working properties:

• Compatible with tube oils, oil mediums, turpentine, and mineral spirits
• Can be manipulated with a palette knife to a buttery, brushable consistency
• Works on any surface suitable for traditional oil paint — sized canvas, paper, panels, and more
• When dry, can be varnished just like an oil painting

Drawing Oils™ are precise and portable. Their harder formulation responds differently across surfaces — gliding smoothly on slick paper, grabbing texture on rougher grounds. A brush loaded with odourless mineral spirits (OMS) transforms them into fluid washes reminiscent of watercolour. A blending stump creates atmospheric, hazy layers. A firm eraser applied to fresh marks enables reductive drawing techniques similar to charcoal.

Key working properties:

• Fully dry — unlike oil pastels, they require no fixative and no glass for presentation
• Drying time varies by pigment: earth tones like Raw Umber and Payne's Grey dry in days; pigments like Egyptian Violet can take weeks
• Compatible with R&F Pigment Sticks®, tube oil paint, and encaustic
• Both products form a protective skin on the exposed end — easily removed with a razor, sharpener, or a quick draw on scrap paper

Here's where it gets interesting: R&F Pigment Sticks® and Drawing Oils™ are designed to work alongside each other.

Vancouver-based artist Courtney Caroline — who creates rich, colour-saturated oil paintings inspired by food, travel, and shared experience — uses both in her practice, and her approach is a useful blueprint:

Pigment Sticks® for broad, expressive foundation work. Drawing Oils™ for refinement and detail. It's a natural division of labour built into the product design.

Courtney's journey with R&F also speaks to something bigger than technique. She came to oil sticks for artists looking for freedom:

That quality — the way these tools invite you to loosen your grip — is part of what makes them compelling for someone returning to art just as much as for a working professional.

If you're newer to oil-based media, R&F Drawing Oils™ are the natural entry point. The Introductory Set is compact, curated, and low-pressure — an ideal way to understand how oil paint in stick form feels before committing to a broader palette.

If you're a painter looking for immediacy, gestural impact, and the full depth of oil colour without a brush or palette, R&F Pigment Sticks® are your medium. The 91-colour range means you're not compromising on your palette.