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Which is easier to learn, Watercolor or Oil painting?
What are the pros and cons, ups and downs, any interesting features, any particular appeals, I need your opinions, what makes which preferable and why? Thanks!
Watercolour is more convenient to set up, handle and clean up, since it involves the use of only the paints and water. The "ground" is just paper - either cartridge paper or watercolour paper.
Oil painting requires usually a canvas, which you can buy cheaply already stretched onto frame, or masonite (primed). You can also get canvas paper - canvas glued to thick backing paper. For practixe, you can even use thick "craft paper" if you prime the surface (acrylic house paint).
Materials for oil painting include turps (cleanup) and medium (mixed with paint). The cleanup is probably the most inconvenient part.
Watercolours are quicker drying. But slower-drying is an advantage if you want to work longer onthe painting. Oil paintings can take months to dry depending on how much varnish is mixed with them.
No medium is easier to learn in the sense of actual painting. It is just that oil painting methods tend to be more elaborate and careful.
Watercolour is in a way more difficult, since with "wet-in-wet" you are often applying them with large amounts of water onto porous paper..They are hard to control when working this way.
Oil painting allows repeated corrections or repainting over time. Watercolour is more immediate, although you can remove it with a sponge and repaint.
But the difficulty of drawing and painting is not to do with the materials or media. Drawing and painting are skills and creative efforts independent of medium. Drawing on butchers paper with a graphite pencil is difficult to learn well, even though it is the most immediate and convenient possible method of drawing.
When yo are spending hours at a time practicing drawing or painting, the medium is not the major factor in difficulty or ease.
Don't necessarily agree with Projectile - oils are more luminous than acrylic, but watercolours are also very vibrant. It's acrylic which tends to be flatter and duller, though it can be used to good effect. It may be a good medium to practice with , but will not entirely translate to oil painting when you wish to use oils.
With watercolour, using watercolour paper (arches) you should tape it around the edges to a beard (need special tape for this) so that it doesn't distort when wet.
You don't need expensive brushees to learn/practice with oils - though some sayit is good to use them, even for practice. Don't use 'supermarket" paints. Student grade are good enough. Many artists use them for professional work. The "artist" quality paints are expensive - real artists paint a lot and so often they cannot justify the expense. Dont' go crazy with quality of materials and equipment - you will impoverish yourself.
The expense can hinder your work, since you are afraid to waste expensive materials. The real concern should be your actual artistic ability, not so much the technical quality of your paintings. That is the hardest thing to learn, and it will take a lot of work.
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