Different palettes and methods, as between oil, w'colour, and acrylic

May I distract you with a thought or two?  My last two paintings have been acrylics - and I've reflected on the quite strong differences in approach between acrylic and oil, specifically, and to some extent in watercolour.  I used three blues, and three yellows - four if you count Yellow Ochre - in the most recent acrylic: I'd never do that in a hundred years if I were painting in oil or watercolour; does this prove or even indicate anything?  That you have to work harder in acrylic to get colour saturation, including using more colours?  That acrylic can be brash, and needs to be adjusted (in my case, with glazes, usually)?   I've noticed this before - the other media (to save me typing oil and watercolour every time) can get you to the needed colour more quickly; that glazes can muddy colours in those other media (but are still very useful).  And of course that precision - detail - is easier to achieve in water-borne media; maybe at a cost; it's easy too to swamp an acrylic with so much detail that the broad strokes get obscured by fiddly bits - it's the fact that you could keep on painting an acrylic for days, weeks, months, adding, overpainting, changing, adjusting - do that in watercolour: or rather don't, and you'll get something horrible, obviously overworked, and muddy.   In oil - well, you CAN keep on adjusting an oil; I have a feeling though that on the whole you really won't want to - oil has a way of settling itself; it creates textures, ridges, that are hard to paint over; acrylic not so.  It lies much flatter than oil, with or without water or medium.  You can usually tell if an oil has been a struggle - with acrylic, not so much: an opaque coat of paint can cover a multitude of sins.   Then you come to the medium you prefer - something I've been asked before, and was stumped for an answer, because they're all different: how can you compare them?  I enjoy painting in all of them - much depending on mood at the time.  Subtlety is more achievable with watercolour and oil; it has to be fought for in acrylic, thanks to the instant nature of the medium and the fact that you can attack errors or unsatisfactory passages almost immediately.  The only way I've found is to take it slowly - despite the fact that the paint dries so fast; stop, think, resist the temptation to re-load the brush and charge in; even make yourself a cup of tea while you think about it; the other media force you to slow down - it takes a while for watercolour to dry (and I hate the noise of hair-dryers, which anyway can blow your washes all over the place) and even longer for oil to settle.  You don't give them time: they TAKE it.  Perhaps that's all it is - not a deficiency in pigment load, or genuine tendency for acrylic to appear brash or gaudy (though some of the pigments in acrylic are extremely powerful) but a result you might get with the other media if you were able to rush to the finishing post and get there too early.   Plus - brand makes a big difference: every brand of Titanium White I've had - from Cryla, to Chromacolour, to W & N, to graduate (student quality) acrylic, to System 3 ... they all have a different consistency; Cryla is full-bodied; W & N artists' grade a very powerful, opaque white; System 3 more liquid; Chromacolour has two whites, Titanium and Chroma White, the latter being pleasingly opaque and heavy, with the consistency of cream.  I still haven't tried the various US brands - so further journeys of discovery await.   So there we are: this was never leading anywhere in particular, it's just a set of observations about the variety of experience open to us, even within just one type of paint.  I'd be interested to know, though - does anyone out there just HATE acrylic, perhaps for some of the reasons hinted at in my meanderings?  E.g. speed of drying, immediacy, harsher colours?  

Yes, the W & N are good, as are the two major Daler-Rowney brands (Cryla and System 3) - they all have plenty of body, plus strong though not overwhelming colour.  I happily recommend all of them. Haven't tried Liquitex yet: it's on my to-get list.  

That's an interesting technique, Martin and Denise - I suppose I employ a variant of it; it was Hockney who observed that the big advantage of acrylics is that you can use the old oil technique of glazing, without having to wait forever; very useful.  But yes, you can also wash in, wash off, creating any number of effects with thin paint, thicker paint, wet on wet, wet on dry.  I like the depth you've achieved in your painting Martin, and the effect in Denise's piece - which the unique characteristics of acrylic lend a distinctive look. I'm less keen on what I regard as gimmicks in acrylic - the broken eggshells, bits of fabric or plant in the paint, even texture paste, which just seem unnecessary to me.  Still, they work for some; and collage, if such floats your boat, is easier with acrylic than in other media.