Acrylic vs. Oil Paints: Comparing Techniques, Durability, and Style
If you are eager to learn how to paint but have little or no idea of where to begin? This blog is just for you. Do you want to learn to paint but don’t know where to start? To understand the difference between acrylic vs. oil paints, it is important to know about their pros and cons. Before that, let’s start by asking some questions to help you decide the best medium for you. Everything here will be all about the standard oil and acrylic paints. So, let’s get excited about painting and splash some colours with acrylic or oil paints!
What is the pace of your work?
Acrylic paints are ideal for working on any object. This is perhaps the best factor of acrylic paints that makes it more suitable for beginners while they learn to paint. You may set up your skills quickly by painting on any object, such as a card, canvas board or a paper. Grab whatever you find and start quickly, otherwise there is a tendency of acrylic paints to dry out.
Even if you are ready with your canvas in front of you and something happens. You shift your sight to know the matter. And boom! In such a short time, the squeezed paint will become dry and solid. Therefore, it is not a tranquil painting appropriate. Nonetheless, there’s a solution to this problem. Simply add 15% of the retarder to your acrylic paint and let it stay wet for longer. You may also use a stay wet painting palette to allow the paint to be moist.
Oil paints, on the other hand, can stay wet for a longer time. This offers the much-needed flexibility to begin a painting, rest and then come back to finish the painting where you left. Oil paints left on the palette will also remain wet and flexible. In addition, you can blend together the paints on your work canvas. However, the presence of oil, typically linseed oil, in oil paints makes it only suitable to work on prepared surfaces.
How do you like to blend your colours?
Acrylic paints are an ideal choice for painters who want to blend clean and bright colours easily. Get crisp edges when working with acrylics and achieve a more graphic composition. You can easily hide areas and quickly work over them. Plus, acrylic paints give you a scope to mask out hard shapes with thicker paint.
However, it can be frustrating to get a smoother blending finish with acrylic paints because of its faster speed of drying. Suppose you are painting on a large-scale of 6ft x 4ft canvas. It is practically impossible to complete the painting at a go. Blending with acrylics can be frustrating because of the speed of the drying time. Especially if you are working on a large-scale, it can be practically impossible to work on the entire canvas and get to the finishing point together.
This is for a size of say 6ft x 4ft. If you are working smaller than this, you can create some lovely blends. If you still want to choose acrylic paints, work on small and medium canvas to create beautiful blends. Otherwise, you need to use a retarder, soft gel glossy or glazing liquid gloss to elongate the working time.
Oil paints are the emperor of the paint kingdom as they can blend colour smoothly. The slow drying factor of oil paints makes it a fantastic choice to make subtle blends. Working with oil paints means you will be using the wet-into-wet nature to create a smooth transition. This is significantly important to paint a portrait where you may have the need to review and modify constantly. Moreover, the addition of slow drying oils to the paint can help you create wet surfaces for weeks. Unlike acrylic paints, you have to wait for a day to create crisp edges when using oil paints.
Do you want a colour shift?
Acrylic paints won’t get feeble in time. With projected laboratory tests, the paint will offer the same look in the next 200 years. However, the binder in oil paints turns yellow over time. Acrylic paints can only change the colour after it dries out. The binder in acrylics is white, but dries translucent. As a result, it appears lighter on the surface when you apply strokes at first. Eventually, it dries darker while the white binder becomes clear. It is a matter of time and practice to be able to learn to shift. However, beginners may feel awkward to bring precise colours.
With oil paints, you won’t feel this problem. Oil paints don’t initially shift colours when painted on the surface. However, once it dries, the colour shift occurs. To overcome this obstacle, oil out the space you want to work on. You can also colour your window.
Acrylic Vs. Oil Paints: Pros and Cons
Acrylic paints
Pros
- Perfect to paint on different types of objects
- Offers crisp edges
- Lightfast
- Glossy finish
Cons
- Quickly dries out
- Doesn’t give smooth blend on big canvas
Oil Paints
Pros
- Offers a lot longer working time
- Can achieve smooth blends
- Easy for professional use
Cons
- Only suitable to work on a prepared board or canvas
- Can master the art of creating crisp edges only after practice
Final Thoughts
Between acrylic vs. oil paints, it is difficult to find the best, as both are indispensable mediums in the painting world. Each painting comes with its specific properties, benefits and cons. Acrylic paints are a new formation and have their own reputation to be versatile in the modern world of art.
Nonetheless, the illustrious history of oil paints goes back to past centuries when talented artists used them to create inherent texture and fineness in their masterpieces. Based on your requirements and abilities, it is better to select and start filling colors on your canvas!