Exploring Wet Mediums

Acrylic, oils, watercolors, pastels, charcoal and more.  These are all examples of common mediums that artists can use.  In most of my paintings that I have posted, I have used acrylic.  In this post, I will show some examples of my work in other mediums.

One of my acrylic paintings
Image Courtesy of Maddy Lee

This painting is an example of acrylic.  Some reasons why acrylic is so popular is because the paint  is cheaper, dries fast and can be used with water.   When painting with acrylic, always remember that the pigment  dries darker than it appears on your palette.  

An Oil Painting
Photo Courtesy of Maddy Lee

Above is one of my oil paintings.  Oil paintings can sometimes turn out looking a bit pastelist, such as the one above.  I painted this in summer 2011 out near the Glen Wild Park.  Oils are much more troublesome to use than acrylic for many reasons.  One of the main reasons that I have trouble with it, is because you have to use turpentine (paint thinner) instead of water.  Turpentine can smell REALLY bad, even when you buy the odorless kind.  Smelling this always makes me nauseous, so I don't use oils very often.  Another troublesome thing about oils is that they take really long to dry.  Really REALLY long.  The painting above is a 8.5x11" and it took about three weeks to dry.  Not only is this annoying when you want to display your work, but also if you are on a quick time frame, or you have to get something done for a client.

Watercolor Painting
Photo Courtesy of Maddy Lee

This is a watercolor barn painting that I did this summer.  I live in upstate New York in the summer by the way.  Anyways, I had never done a watercolor painting before this one, and it kinda looks like it.  The background and foreground look horrible, and the only thing I really like is the streakiness of the wood.  Watercolors are EXTREMELY difficult, considering you have to plan out your painting before you paint, so you can leave the white spaces blank.  You also can't go over your mistakes, whereas in oils and acrylics you can.  I think that if I had more experience with watercolors, I would like them a lot more, but for now I am used to the spontaneous use of acrylics.

So these are all the different paint mediums I have used fairly recently.  As you can probably tell, acrylic is my favorite by far.  But don't take my word for it.  Try these mediums out, and figure out which one you like the best.  And remember, no matter how bad you think your painting looks, everything is better than a blank canvas.