The Types of Paint Oil Acrylic Watercolor the Pros and Cons

The Paints! Oil, Acrylic and Watercolor

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[VisualMind]

How on earth is watercolor as expensive as oil?

[kingdededinkleberg]

Pros of oil: it never dries
Cons of oil: it never dries

[vanessakleinart]

i feel like this is a bit biased? i started out with oil and i feel like it’s the easiest out of all paint types because the slow dry time is so forgiving. i feel like people make oil painting out to be super intimidating but it can be as easy or hard as you make it.

[brownjennings]

Bob Ross paints with oil, but he doesn't have to use turpentine. He uses odorless paint thinner.

[Coratison]

I always wondered what the difference between these was, very interesting to finally find out, thanks !

[shardonayM]

My mom bought me a huge kit with both oil, acrylic and water paints, thanks for the tips

[erinsmith]

I think you've swayed your information slightly to your own preference- while I wouldn't recommend someone start out with oils, they're not as bad as you make them seem... really it's a personal choice

[MY-homt]

Wait what watercolors are you using? Mine are cheaper than my acrylics. 😂

[dreanki]

Your information on oil is not very good at all. My burnt umber dries to the touch in about 5 hours, pigmentation strengths matter as well as the medium used. Paint quality matters a lot. Also, my oils haven't faded. If oils are that bad, how then how did all the paintings from the old masters survive as long as they did? Also, as others have said, linseed oil is just flax seed oil. We eat flax. Also, pure gum spirits of turpentine is made from pine tree sap. Not near as bad as you think it is. And the paint is not toxic unless you eat it.

[Dan.B.Artist]

great summary but I think youre missing a few points:

the actual oil paint is harmless unless it has dangerous pigments like cadmium, its only made of oil and pigment and the linseed oil is a refined oil the in its unrefined form is eaten by people. With the oil mediums you can get mediums that cause the oil to dry in 24-48 hours. Oil is the most expensive I will agree thats what put me off to start with.

Acrylic is made of plastics of which are cancergens, the paint itself is probably more harmful than just the oil paint. You need mediums for it to slow the drying time especially if youre a beginner, and mixing with just water is not recommended as it weakens the paint, ive heard some horror stories from artists whose acrylics came off of the canvas because they used too much water and didnt use a flow medium to thin the paint. You will go though acrylic paint faster than both oil and watercolour. In a way it is the hardest to work with as it dries so quickly.

With watercolour the most economic way to do it is buy tubes and fill your own pans or palette and let it dry they wet, tubes tend to be a tiny bit more expensive than the pans but you get twice as much paint. You can use it thickly from a dried pan just use less water.

[RuRaynor]

I feel like you're missing a few things. Acrylic paints also generally dry a slightly different shade (I think they darken?) unless you're buying a really good quality brand.

With watercolours and oil you have to prep your medium- stretching paper, adding gesso etc- whereas with acrylic you can pretty much just paint on any bit of wood you find. They're very versatile paints.

Oils slow drying can be seen as a pro, as it allows you to come back and rework areas.

The biggest con with watercolour is that you can't paint over mistakes.

[tshewangpenjore]

Do you have a grudge against oil paint?

[djspookyty]

I use watercolour paint and have been using it for almost a year. I tried acrylic paint but I HATED IT! It stained my clothes, stained my desk, and Jesus Christ the cleanup was unbelievable! I really do appreciate this video tho. I love how you went in depth about each paint type :)

[andrewabney]

You are missing a few points on oils. Firstly, you don't need turps or mineral spirits, you can use non-drying oils to clean your brushes and non-thickened refined linseed oil or safflower oil to make your paint more long. Secondly, linseed oil is extremely safe from a toxicity perspective. It is actually edible, as is safflower oil (also common in oil paint manufacture). Thirdly, it is the drying oil not the turpentine that spontaneously combusts. Turpentine and mineral spirits are volatile and will burn, but also evaporate fast enough in the open, that typically do not contribute to the aftermath of combustion. Drying oils, by comparison support combustion and the process of curing is quite exothermic and the room temperature contributes very little to the equation. Oil soaked rags should be either stored in air tight containers or washed out a good soap after use. And finally, latex is the worst choice if you are working with Turpentine or mineral spirits. They will soak right through. Nitrile gloves (double glove if using the thin 3mil or less disposables) or a PVA glove are the best options.

[josephinedauphinais]

I don't agree with blendability being it's only pro.
Oil pains a very buildable and are good for adding texture aswel

[rainbowunicorn]

this video is pretty biased. im sure oils have a lot more pros than you listed and watercolor being expensive? what?? i stick with watercolor because its the cheapest medium i found.

[cynthieful]

Good video but my experiences with oils are a bit different. I only recently started painting with oils so I don't understand everything about them yet, but I definitely agree that the blendability is just remarkable. I found that another pro is really the fact that it dries so slowly because I take hours and even days to paint one large/medium sized painting so it's very convenient that I'm able to just continue from where I left and nothing has dried while I was gone. The oils that I've used did fade a bit after drying but not so much that I would have to paint it again. More pigmented, stronger colors didn't fade much at all. The cons are the mess they make (paint gets everywhere because it doesn't dry haha) and yes, chemicals

[ilahjarvis]

I have to disagree with the statement that watercolor is as expensive as oil paint. Since very little paint is used, and watercolor is rarely mixed with anything besides water, it is cheap compared to oil or acrylic paint. Even acrylic painters rely on mediums for different effects, and both oil and acrylic painters go through a lot of white paint, another cost watercolorists don't face. A 14ml tube of watercolor paint will last me for several years, and watercolor never goes bad. I inherited some tubes watercolor paint that dried up in the tube. I cut them open with a utility knife, got them wet and they were totally usable. Not so with oil or acrylic. It's also easy to destroy a brush with oil and especially acrylic if you don't clean them carefully, whereas watercolor brushes aren't damaged by dry paint. Lastly, you can spend as much on a single canvas as a five pack of 22"x 30" 140lb. cold press Arches watercolor paper, and watercolorist don't need gesso. Watercolor is a very different animal than oil or acrylic, but it's cheaper, less messy, more portable, less stinky and way less dangerous.

[louismatter]

Just 3 words : WATER-SOLUBLE OIL. No more turpentine, just WATER and OIL !!

[arshdeep-tgqw]

Pros for oils:
Blendability
they dry slow ( so you can go back and fix stuff if necessary)
you don't need to use a lot and it is pretty pigmented.
It spreads over the canvas or work surface easily if you have a bigger brush.
It's very easy to make different colours or mix to create different tones of a certain colour.


there isn't just one pro.