Versatility
I began my career painting with oils and I believe I will always be an oil painter. I sometimes wonder if what you start with is always your favorite medium or if it makes a difference. I have tried acrylics and watercolors and always end up back with oils.
Oil paints are made with the same pigments as watercolor except that the “binder” they mix with is an oil. The only way to make them opaque is to use white along with them. The water colorist does not use any white, only the whiteness of the paper. Interesting, isn’t it!!
Oil paint is very versatile and can be used in many different ways. The most common is Alla Prima which of course simply means painting wet-in-wet. We apply color thinly to thickly toward the finished task. Yet, there are other ways of using oils such as glazing, under-painting, scumbling, and dragging.
The old masters did mostly glazing, that is, to put a transparent layer of color over a monochromatic under-painting. In my opinion, they probably did this to use their colors sparingly as they were difficult to get. But glazing provides a luminosity and glow like no other and it is what draws me to totally be in awe of them.
There are many books out there to explore all these techniques and I would encourage you all to go the library and read about them.
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