Ox Gall Medium

The medium I used on this week's test is Ox Gall. It is literally from cow gall bladder, but there are synthetic versions. It is commonly used in liquid version, but Lukas makes a pan version for under $4.
Most watercolor contains three things, besides the color: gum arabic, glycerin, and oxgall. The gum arabic and glycerin help it to bind to the paper, and the oxgall helps the paint move around.
Oxgall is considered a "wetting solution," which seems like an oxymoron to me, since it actually makes the paint dry faster. It seems its best use would be en plain aire under humid conditions, like Florida, where your paper just doesn't want to dry.

Directions call for you to use it straight to wet your paint instead of water. Here is a way to test what you can do with oxgall. First wet some wc paper and drop in plain color with nothing added but water. Watch how the paint moves around and blends. Do the same thing, only wet your paint with oxgall and drop it into wet paper. Notice how the paint spreads differently, like bursts of fireworks. The center of the drop pulls quickly away, drying rather quickly. (it loses its shine). If you set one color next to another, instead of blending like the first sample of paint, the paints tend to pull away from each other, not blending much. If you drop one color in the middle of another color burst, the colors tend to not blend much. They want to retain their own identity.