What paint to use on paintings?

What paint to use on paintings depends on individual comforts and situation. It’s wrong to call one type of paint as superior over another. It’s one’s own call.

From my own experience, I want to jot down the pros and cons of water colours, acrylics and oils. There are lots of other painting mediums like charcoal and pastels and what not, one can try them too before finding his or her own style.

Kindly note that your choice of paint could also depend on whether you are painting on a canvas, fabric, furniture, pot, wall, face, body, paper, glass etc.

What paint to use on paintings?  Water Colors or Acrylics or Oils?

Let’s start with water colours:

Pros of water colors:

• Maintaining the brushes is easier.
• They can be used to give marvelous transparent effect.
• A painting can be finished in one or two sittings.
• Comparatively cheaper as the medium is water.
• Offers lots of techniques like wet on wet, wet on dry, gauche technique, etc.

Cons of water colors:

• It’s difficult to correct errors when it comes to water colors.
• If using wet on dry technique, one has to wait before applying the next layer.

Let’s come to Acrylics now:

Pros of Acrylic Colors:

• Maintaining the colours and brushes is easier.
• They offer maximum variety in terms of techniques. Wet on wet, wet on dry, impasto, gauche, etc. They can work as water colours as well as oils.
• These colours dry up fast and so finishing a painting in these colours doesn’t take as much time as oils.
• Comparatively cheaper medium then oils.

Cons of Acrylic Colors:

• Since the colours dry up very fast, it can be disadvantage too in some paintings and techniques. As a result, an additional medium might be required to slow down drying.
• It’s difficult to mix colours in an acrylic painting. The kind of smooth effect which can be achieved very easily in oil colours requires lot of effort in acrylics.

Lastly, let’s discuss oil colours:

Pros of oil colors:

• Oil colours have rich feel to them as they were used by the old masters.
• Oils are easier to mix in comparison to acrylics.
• These colours can be worked in maximum number of layers.

Cons of oil colors:

• Maintaining the brushes is comparatively difficult.
• The colours and brushes are comparatively most expensive as compared to other mediums.
• In addition, there is an extra cost of using linseed oil or liquin.
• As oil colours takes time to dry, these paintings generally take time to finish.

So these were the most common pros and cons of the three types of paints. Hopefully, these will give you some clarity on the question of what paint to use on paintings. Still, the best idea is to try all the paints and get the feel of them. It’s the feel which is important. If you enjoy using one kind, then the cons of that particular type of paint won’t matter in the long run!