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Painting oil over acrylic
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Message
Posted
m beginning to think there might be something in this after all; in each case below the oil is on the right and everything has been overpainted except the background (to give me something dry to hold when moving them; I'd already repainted Frida's background in acrylic). The oils do look better, at least to my eyes.
Edited
by Peter Smith
Posted
The oil gives a softer look, but that would be true if you'd used it throughout as well. It's hard to achieve subtlety in acrylic, or harder anyway; not that you'll always want that. Nonetheless, if you find this a rewarding or pleasurable approach, you carry on doing it! Anything that adds to the fun of painting is always worth doing.
Posted
I'm beginning to think there might be something in this after all; in each case below the oil is on the right and everything has been overpainted except the background (to give me something dry to hold when moving them; I'd already repainted Frida's background in acrylic). The oils do look better, at least to my eyes.
Posted
I don’t use oils or acrylic as you know Peter , looking at the photos you have posted the right hand portraits are far superior to the left . As Robert said they have soften the look and the shaded areas are much more realistic looking, it’s actually taken your portraits into a higher level and more pleasant to look at.
Posted
Alan and I agree on many things - well, you know; great minds think alike - and I know we both agree that oil is the finest medium we have for portraiture. Though I have had some successes - opinions may differ - in acrylics, for harder-edged stuff.
But - if you've been won over to oils through your experience - was that, I wonder, what your tutor intended? - that has to be a good thing. It's added to your repertoire, and we can't have too many strings to our bows.
Posted
Yes - well; now... then.... let's come to the point quickly: I do NOT like them - I don't like the feel of them on the brush, to me it's not unlike painting with soap, and it's hard to form any good idea of how permanent they'll be compared with regular oils - they've not been around long enough to form any useful judgement, and laboratory tests will only tell us so much - but for the record, they've passed the various longevity tests to which they've been subjected in the laboratory. How much that will mean - no idea: problems with paints can take a long time to reveal themselves.
Some say they're not concerned by permanence, but - I think most of us are, in truth; if you paint a picture, you've put a lot of work into it, and don't want to see it fail. However, there's no indication as yet that they'll be likely to.
I also find them under-pigmented - so you use a lot more paint to get an intense colour than you would with regular oils; you can offset that by technique to some extent, but I'd rather not have to take it into account.
My late chum Murray Ince on the other hand excelled with them - I expect some of his videos are still available. He took to using them because he was asthmatic, and couldn't handle the effects of solvents; which is a reason for using them - except you don't have to use solvents in oil painting; though it's true that most of us do - I went for a time using just Linseed oil, but - I've crept back to Turps.
So really - you take your choice here: I know one professional oil painter who used them, largely on environmental grounds; but switched back to regular oils for their strength and vividity. They can be cleaned up with water after use - if that's any advantage; I don't think it is, and even if I did, I wouldn't judge any paint by the ease with which you can clean your palette after using it (and would probably still use gobs of unused paint on mine, to scrape off later while cursing my laziness).
They're miscible rather than soluble, by the way - if that matters... Water doesn't act as a solvent with them, but as a diluent.
In short, my experience with them is negative; Murray's was positive; some painters here use them, some wouldn't. So there you are - what could be clearer or more authoritative........?
Posted
I think they are fine. If a brand does both oil and miscible, it's likely the main difference is in the oil binder make up, the pigments being the same. I don't use W&N much, mostly because they were used in Brunel Uni art classes, in massive tubes, which were probably made of poorer pigments, and I didnt get on with them.
So I use Cobra. But also mix with standard oils.
Here's what Bromley Art supplies has to say.
https://www.artsupplies.co.uk/blog/exploring-the-winsor-newton-oil-paint-range-a-masterpiece-in-every-tube/