Oils and Acrylics are both awesome painting mediums depending on what kind of a project you are doing and in what conditions. Bellow is a table showing the qualities of both paints which may help you choose which is the right medium for you to work with. Oils are oil soluble and dry slowly where as Acrylics are water soluble are dry quickly. Oils are better for blending because of the viscosity of the oil medium. Viscosity determines how quickly the paint sets, remains moist and workable. Acrylic paints tend to set much quicker and mixing is better done on the palette than on the surface. If you are a beginner painter usually a teacher will recommend you get started with Acrylics because there are less technicalities to it and it is cleaner. However if you live in a hot or dry area such as Arizona and you want to paint outside, then I would strongly recommend trying oil paints. Acrylics tend to dry so quickly in hot and dry conditions that they become very difficult to work with. One benefit of oil paints is that you can work on a painting for days without the surface becoming dry, this allows you to mix the paints on the surface, and blend nicely, creating smooth transitions. With Acrylics on the other hand this is almost impossible, on the other hand if you want your painting to be handled soon after, then acrylic is better. One of my favorite acrylic sets is the Blickrylic student sets. They are cheap, have good pigment, mixability, and opaqueness. Only downside is the lack of color options.
For the mural painting at the bottom of this post, I used all acrylic paint. It was a good choice because at the size of 7' x 7', I saved a lot of money by choosing acrylics over oils. Another reason I used acrylics is because of my style of painting which is unplanned, often requires lots of changes and repainting of certain areas. Because Acrylic dries quickly I could completely paint over an area without making a mess by having the paints mix. Also by thinning down the upper most layer I could achieve a nice semistransparent effect in some areas giving nice depth of color. With oil I would have to wait longer until the bottom layer dried. The downside, was that if I ever wanted to blend a new color with a layer beneath, I would have to either thin down the paint significantly, or remix the color below again.
For the mural painting at the bottom of this post, I used all acrylic paint. It was a good choice because at the size of 7' x 7', I saved a lot of money by choosing acrylics over oils. Another reason I used acrylics is because of my style of painting which is unplanned, often requires lots of changes and repainting of certain areas. Because Acrylic dries quickly I could completely paint over an area without making a mess by having the paints mix. Also by thinning down the upper most layer I could achieve a nice semistransparent effect in some areas giving nice depth of color. With oil I would have to wait longer until the bottom layer dried. The downside, was that if I ever wanted to blend a new color with a layer beneath, I would have to either thin down the paint significantly, or remix the color below again.
Oils
| Acrylics
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