Position:Home>Visual Arts> Is there a big difference in oil paint and acrylic paint?

Acrylic paints are made from a type of plastic, and oil paints are oil based!. The biggest difference between the two is that acrylics dry *much* faster!. Oils stay wet and malleable for a lot longer!. You have more time to blend colors and create layers with oils!. Cheaper acrylic paints tend to have a "plastic" look, not as deep as oils, but there are brands of acrylics that look exactly like oil paints!. The main difference is that oils take a lot longer to dry!. also, you use different spirits and turpentines to thin out oil paints and/or clean brushes!. With acrylics, you mainly just use water but the paints dry quickly and can destroy brushes easily!.

Oil paints are also more fragile than acrylics!.!.!. oil paintings are more prone to aging, yellowing and becoming brittle!. Acrylics are more resistant to wear/tear/age!. also, acrylics are versatile and you can easily mix them with other materials, such as pens, charcoal, ink, etc!. I would say that acrylics are generally the more versatile paint!. With acrylics, you can mimic the look of oil paintings to watercolors and everything in between!. Oil paints are preferable if your main goal is to paint a lot of layers and blend colors extensively!. Otherwise, I think acrylics are a lot easier and more practical to work with!.

Edit: For a six foot wide painting, oils would be more expensive (although not by much) and would take a long time to dry!. However, you'd have a lot of time to blend the paint!. With acrylics, the paint would dry very quickly, and I don't know if that's what you want if you are painting something so large!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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I love your question!. There is one secret way that a lot of master artist work with and it helps them finish large canvases faster!.
Most canvas made today and used today is primed with acrylic gesso which is acrylic paint with some rough things added to it to give it tooth!. So when you start an oil painting you have an acrylic underpainting!. What I do is use acrylic paint for the beginning of painting, the first blocks of color are put in with acrylic paint, which is cheaper but the colors are not as natural as in oil!. Than I go to oils where the colors are more luminous and more natural and beautiful!. The painting gets done in much faster time and is not as expensive to finish!. The bright colors of acrylic paint come through the layers of oils and make the painting shimmer!.
I hope it helps and your painting will look good!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Acrylic dries much much faster than oil paints, and you don't need to use mediums with acrylic!.

For a large scale painting, I would probably use oil paint!. Just because I find them easier to handle, and they stay wet for days or weeks even, so you can continue to work on the same layer over a long period of time!.

Then again, you might prefer acrylics!. It always annoys me how fast they dry, but you might like to work quickly!.

Hope that helped =]Www@QuestionHome@Com

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I'm just guessing, but I'd say that if you are used to acrylics, and have all the brushes and "stuff" for acrylics, it makes sense NOT to switch mediums for a big project!.

It's hard to say anything not knowing your painting style, or the effect you want, but I've never liked acrylics for natural subjects like portraits!. They always seem artificial and harsh, which is probably a good thing for an urban landscape!.
Www@QuestionHome@Com

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drying time and ease of cleanup depending on how much you layer the paint there are some colors especially in sunset/sunrise that are close together but will mix for an unintended color but I find that it blends a little better being that it does not dry so quicklyWww@QuestionHome@Com

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