Why paint with oils?

by Janis R. Jessop

People who are new to painting often ask me, "Why do you like oil paint?" Common perceptions among those who haven't mastered it are that it is messy, takes too long to dry and smells funny.

It's true that oil paint has disadvantages in terms of expediency. I certainly had a lot of challenges when I switched from acrylic to oils at the insistence of my MSU painting professor, George Rose. But in spite of its drawbacks, serious painters have been using oils for more than five hundred years. It was initially popularized in the middle ages in Great Britain. They only used it for simple decoration, not for portraits or landscapes.

At the time, there were many artists who used tempera paints because it does dry faster, without as much mess. But oil painting came to be used and practiced as a form of art in the 1600s, and most of the great masters of the Renaissance selected it as their primary medium. Do you still wonder why you should choose oils? Here are some of its important benefits.

While it's true that oil paint dries slower than other forms of paint, that is actually what gives artists enough time to perfect a painting's details. Though there are some artists who may find this quality cumbersome, this is one art form that is taught in almost every art school, college and university. There are several other advantages to using oil paints, as follows:

• It can be left on your palette for a long time, since it doesn't dry out as quickly as other types of paint.
• It can be left open for weeks. This allows an artist to work through different sessions.
• The colors are more intense and pure than in other types of paint, since the carrier is better able to take a wide assortment of pigments.
• It blends wonderfully. When blended on canvas, it facilitates artistic brush strokes and other techniques which just aren't possible with acrylic or tempera.

You are better able to bring your creativity to your canvas, and can take action step by step. Millions of newcomers to oil painting have mastered the medium and gone on to start professional art careers, so you can do it too!