After some research on starting out oil painting, I have came upon the opinion of acrylic painting. They are pretty similar to beginners. They both require brushes and pastels, both can paint the same kind of landscape that I am interested in. Except, some major difference once you get into the actual painting process.
Oil paints takes a long time to dry. By "a long time", I mean a day or two. And it makes sense. If you poor a drop of oil and a drop of water on a counter top, which one would dry faster? Of course the water drop. And because of the slow evaporation rate, it is much easier to mix colors with oil. You can attend the oil painting after an hour or two to change some clouds, mount ranges, etc. and make it appear as if there were the original artist's intention. As a result, oil paints are much more blended. If you see an oil painting with no sharp edges throughout, chances are the painting is oil. Acrylic, on the other hand, dries very fast (one or two hours). Acrylics are water based. From a typical acrylic painting of landscape, you can see very distinctive lights and shadows, with minimal blend between different shads of colors.
The picture above is by one of my favorite artist Leonid Afremov, called two couples. This is a typical palette knife acrylic painting, as a good example of the sharp edges of knife strokes of acrylic paintings.
As a chance to advertise a good Smithsonian program: The smithsonian associates. They are starting a 6-session evening introduction class on oil painting starting July 10th, 2014 at 6:30pm. Concurrently, a 6-session evening introduction class on acrylic painting starting July 11th, 2014 at 6:00pm.
See you there.
No comments:
Post a Comment