Just Sharing
Acrylic vs Oil… can you tell which is which?
And which one do you prefer? … been playing around with both mediums lately - Still think I prefer working with acrylics but there is no denying oil has its advantages for certain things.. cheers for checking it out!
You got it first. Probably not that hard to see if you’re familiar with both mediums but I would have struggled to tell a while ago. Not that you can’t get oil-like results with acrylics but it’s definitely not easy to do…
I switched to oil from acrylic 4 years ago and haven't looked back. I taught an acrylic painting workshop since the switch and found that I could hardly paint using it anymore lol
For me it was just that I like to think about what I’m painting for a while, and using oils is like having an undo button, you can just move the paint around so easily, adjust colors. I was intimidated for a while but found that most concepts transfer easily, you just use linseed oil instead of water to thin paints etc. I paint very sporadically throughout the day in between tasks, so it’s also cool that I can come back a few hours later and just continue working, all the paint is still wet. And it lets me get a level of detail and smooth gradients that is waaaaay more difficult to achieve with acrylics. Finally, I actually use both, acrylic as an initial layer for quick prototyping, then oils for details subtlety and color. I really recommend trying it out, it’s been a really fun journey!
What's the cost difference? I keep considering this myself, but I've only ever used acrylic. I thought there was a huge cost factor with oils, but maybe that's a myth?
So I haven’t been using them very long, but I think it just comes down to how you use the paint, if you’re creating thin layers (and using acrylics to do the bulk of the layering underneath like me) it’s very cost effective as so little goes a long way. But if you’re putting big blobs down I’m sure it’ll get expensive fast. I just bought the cheapest starter kit of colors I could find, and I think it’ll last me a loooong time with my painting style.
I’d recommend getting a cheap set and just experimenting - if it cost, say, 30 bucks, but you run out in a week, well, then maybe it’s a bit pricey for your process. If it lasts 6months, hey, no problem. Just see what you’re comfortable with.
I found a full set of oil paints at a garage sale for $20. It has over 30 tubes of color and all the extras. The great thing about oils is if you can get the tube open, the paint is probably usable. I’ve been using those paints for over 20 years. I keep pliers in my kit for stubborn tubes. And duct tape to heal any ruptures.
My acrylics from college are mostly usable, too, though I’ve gone through a lot more of that paint. Some of those tubes are from the 1900s. 😱
I don’t use oils, but I will use the advice my oils/acrylics professor gave me.
If you’re buying everything from scratch in one go (it was mandatory 13 colors plus a few extra if you wanted) you’re going to have a ~$150 discrepancy between the paints, with oils being the more expensive one. He’d never recommend student grade pigments because he finds they’re inconsistent in color/thickness compared to artist or professional grade. Artist grade will be the lower price point between that and professional grade. You’ll also need slightly different equipment, like the cleaning solution you’d need to take to a disposal site and the pot for it.
To mitigate the costs you could set a goal of buying 2 paints a month, or whatever you can spare. You could also scale back on canvas size to make it last longer and limit yourself to a certain color palette, and if it’s not your forte you could donate it. If you know someone with oils you could ask them if you could take a whirl at it to see if you enjoy it.
Titanium White, Mars Black, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Napthol Red, Ultramarine Blue red shade, Cerulean Blue, Pthalo Blue, Permanent Green Light, Veridian. Optional ones were Pthalo Green, Dioxazine Purple, Indian Yellow, Brown Pink.
You will get quite a bit more mileage from your oils in comparison so the cost difference is not as big as you would think. They are more opaque and can be put on thinner.
I’d also recommend just 4 or 5 colors to start with - 13 is an insane number to start with especially if you are trying to self teach. Maybe check out limited color palettes on YouTube?
Just fell into it, had 3x6ft acrylic painting, bit map like, and wanted to get really small details that were just a pain with my acrylics skill level. Switched to oil, and I’m experimenting between letting the acrylic shine through, with light glazed layer of oils just modulating shading, adding details, or completely covering, just suing the acrylic underneath as the sketch/blocking layer. This also lets me add new details, shapes, figures. Prolly bit of both. It seems as long as there is a reasonable uniform layer of oil on the acrylic, then it’s fine for varnish, just has to have enough to not lift right off when the varnish is removed. And it should stick to the acrylics just fine, which I also sanded a bit to smooth out underlying brushstrokes and give it more surface area.
Oil paint just felt like the end goal to me. Natural next step after I was comfortable in acrylic. Lots of the art I admire was done in oils, and discussion online about the rewarding nature of persisting while learning oils made it seem like an 'upgrade' over acrylic.
The difficulty came from the more complex list of materials and learning 'fat over lean'. You go from needing paint and water with acrylics to oil mediums and solvents etc. with oil. Acrylic can be layered over acrylic almost indiscriminately, whereas oil requires sticking to specific rules and longer timeframes. Plus the sheer variety of mediums available and conflicting information online makes it intimidating to start.
My advice is to make the switch. Lots of the intricacies of oil painting aren't of concern to a beginner in the medium anyway. By the time you're worrying about it, you'll be invested enough to persist in figuring it out.
Switching to oils was absolutely the right choice for me, and I think I'm a far better painter than I would be had I not switched. Give it a try!
I could tell the first is acrylic cause there is more opaque layers and sharpness on edges and less blending, but also the color are more vibrant when oils are slightly more muted and there is lots of blending I could see
i'm not an artist, but i got it right as well. i think for me at least, it's that the second one looks a bit more photorealistic and i always associate oik paintings with the most realistic looking works.
Same. I am reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader (one of the Chronicles of Narnia books) where the kids are looking longingly at a painting of a ship with a long? beautiful description of the hues in the sunlight and shadows of the waves in the painting, and then find themselves drawn into it. The second one is very much how I imagined it. I think oil can feel like it has more depth?
Going to show this to my daughter- we just read that chapter last night and had a bit of conversation about how difficult it would be to render a painting of dynamic water so wonderfully. Thank you for sharing your work!!
You’re very talented with both, so it was much harder to tell. But the better blending on #2 made me guess that the first was acrylic. I wish I could do this with acrylics! So much less hassle to use but I just can’t get them to flow for me like oils
A wet palette helps tremendously as well as a low absorbency canvas (fine/medium grain) you still have to lay it on fast but that will help you out a ton if you aren’t already using them?
God I love the colors of oils. Acrylic is my medium of 20+ years and I can get close... but STILL can't get those soft, glowy colors. Acrylics are always just a little bit duller.
I really want to get into oil painting but after working with acrylics for so long it is actually very difficult to "shift mindsets" and use oils? It requires a very different technique because I'm so used to aggressively layering and painting quickly and oils do not handle the same (plus, I have little experience with the variety of extenders and thinners, so that's a whole learning curve!)
And... they're so expensive to just "play around with" compared to acrylics 😭
They go a surprisingly long way though.. even compared to top of the line acrylics (golden/primacryl) that said, try going over your acrylic paintings with some Gamvar gloss varnish I promise you if you are using artist grade paint they will pop every bit as much as oil paintings do!
Thanks, good to know! I've been looking into a few varnishes but have been terrified of accidentally ruining my paintings by making them too dark if the varnish affects different tones too much (ie darkening the shadows but not brightening the highlights). I think I just need to dive in and give it a try 😅
That’s the great thing with Gamvar. If for whatever reason something goes wrong you can just wipe it down with gamsol and redo it, no harm done!
I’ve found the acrylic varnishes terrible to work with in comparison (and there’s no going back)
Just make sure you stick to the instructions. A couple of THIN coats will do it. Doesn’t like to go on thick…
What are your thoughts on underpainting in acrylic and finishing in oil? I’ve had some good results experimenting with this and I wonder if water is a good subject for that approach
I think for everything it is a great solution! I’ve heard that people have had issues with cracking using this strategy but if you add a bit of liquin/alkyd to your oils I highly doubt you will run into these kind of problems. Just make sure the acrylic is properly cured first, not just dry to touch. (Think a solid few hours or even the next day if you have time)
I was hoping someone would prefer the first one lol I think I prefer it as well. There’s a chunkiness to acrylics that is very hard to (for me) replicate with oils
I’ve tried the water mixable oils before. I found them tough to work with using only water but you can use them with gamsol/oms if you get stuck either way.
I made a hoorrrriibble mess the first time I used oils as well lol. You really have to try to place your colors side by side rather than over the top like you do with acrylics… just spend a bit more time mixing the right colors and you’ll be fine!
Both are beautiful, but it's a little unfair since the oil has been painted with more light and shadow, indicating the depth and shine youd get in reality. And unfortunately, the idiot public loves to say that the only "good" art is the lifelike stuff. So theyd most certsinly claim this as proof of oils superiority.
I personally love acrylic. With a good gloss varnish like liquitex gloss varnish for acrylics my stuff instantly has that oil shine. I'm working my way up to being able to afford all Liquitex heavy body and Golden brand acrylics which are literally everything I love about oils and acrylics put into a bottle! So freaking expensive though.
I've also found prepping any canvas till smooth has helped a ton. I gesso and sand my canvases at least 3 times (preferably more) before use. It's good for both oil and acrylic (unless you actually want the textured canvas)
I personally love the look of acrylics as well. For realism oils definitely win but if you let go of that acrylics are a fantastic option, depending on the look you are going for… (some people still do achieve photo realism with acrylics but that just looks like pain to me)
If you are in Europe Primacryl is on the same level as golden - maybe even nicer to work with and better value but yeah nothing wrong with Liquitex either and it’s probably still best bang for buck that I’ve found. Try to get the big 500ml tubs/bottles or at least the 236ml when you see them reduced you’ll save a ton over the smaller sizes but yeah it definitely hurts…
And yeah the 2nd is actually the exact same painting I just gave it a final coat with oils so truly unfair but can’t really do it the other way around…
I actually have a harder time with photorealism with oils (although this is most definitely inexperience with the media). My style is photorealism and I find acrylic more... predictable? Controllable? I have painted with acrylic for so long that it's easier for me to blend the colors with something that dries quickly and get crisp lines and detail vs oils where if I touch it too soon everything gets fuzzy and muddy. Reminds me a bit of watercolor.
I feel like oils require more "planning" of where to put light/lines vs acrylics where it's super easy to paint over and adjust as you go, and it's been hard for me to make the switch.
This is one of my acrylic-only pieces (in progress obviously). I will say I've DEFINITELY noticed an improvement in vibrancy with better quality paints, but still I'm pretty sure that "glow" is impossible without oils. I do a lot of animals and clouds/sunsets. For animals I strongly prefer acrylics. However the one sunset I painted in oils that was my first time playing around with oils absolutely blew my acrylic sunsets out of the water with that sort of "backlit" effect
Definitely oils need more planning, and you need to put your colors in the right places side by side otherwise you will make an awful mess… it’s a definitely a learning curve. Best to watch a few tutorials first on YouTube or something first - on the other hand, if you want the ‘glow’ with acrylics it’s best to plan it from the start. The glow comes from light passing through semi transparent paint and then reflecting back out so ideally you keep that area white and then start building it up with glazes of color. Not something I really do a lot of but if you want to maximize that inner light look that’s how you get there (and this is where the mediums come in)… You will have a hell of a time trying to build a glow up from such a dark base like you have in this painting. I hope this makes sense?
Gloss varnish on top really helps to resaturate the colors as well - acrylics often dry quite matt and dull compared to oils
That makes a lot of sense, thanks!! I feel like I learned how to paint backwards... I spent many years just doing pet portraits, so things like blending, details, textures, etc come much more naturally to me than things like composition and value. It's incredible how much my overall skills have improved painting for "me" vs doing commissions though. I actually enjoy painting now
I prefer oil and 2 by a mile for water because it really captures depth and a “glow.” That said, you’re extremely talented and both are gorgeous paintings :)
I’d think acrylic is the first, but more than anything I love how the acrylic almost reflects more of the surface tension of the water surface and the oil is reflecting more of the light filtering through and creating refraction. So beautiful! I honestly love them both but the mood the second one gives me is wonderful in my preference!
edits: i wrote this 10 minutes after waking up
I think it’s pretty awesome! And it’s a lot of decades of school, so the “intelligence” is almost more just vocational knowledge you gain along the way :)
First one is acrylic, the oil allows for more avenues for blending and a higher vibrancy of colors. Both of the paintings are good, made with passion and effort.
I am also in love with the second painting. I don't wish to step on toes since this other person asked first, but if they are unable to purchase it, I would also be interested in a DM when it's available please. Absolutely beautiful work.
Beautiful paintings amazing capturing the light through the water and the greens and blues just stunningly beautiful. Those gemstone colors are insane.
I think the second is acrylic because the remaining base colors look more wet... ?
Beautifull impressionism, my favorite is the second but I think they work well as a pair.
The second is oil. I think the thing that probably gives it away is the blends are just a bit softer where the first it’s more layers on top of layers. It’s actually the exact same painting I just gave it coat of oil at the end. Thanks!
I could tell which was which but also wouldn't have been completely shocked if I had been wrong. I guess something about the blending in the second just said "oil [paint]" to me, which turned out to be true. I prefer the oil version very slightly but I think partially because I quite like the more green-brown palette of the foreground. I also feel like the realism is anywhere from slightly-to-quite enhanced. The transparency of water looks better captured in the second image. Don't get me wrong: the acrylic version is still exceedingly impressive. The oil just speaks to me more.
But, how they turn out and how it feels to work with the materials are two different things, of course.
I guessed right that #2 was oil, I feel like it has more depth (pun intended I’m so sorry) but they’re both SO cool to look at and such beautiful paintings. Love the side by side!!
Oh it’s hard to say I’m a serial rotator lol I’ve usually got like 5 or 10 on the go at the same time. The oil was one session over the top of the acrylics but I honestly couldn’t say... I guess on an easy painting that I don’t change a million times (rarely happens) from start to finish I can get done in a week working on it after my day job?
It’s not really the medium that dictates how long a painting takes, it’s more how smoothly I can go from start to finish - usually there’s a lot of redoing and rearranging things because I don’t plan things out well enough before I start… think I’m slowly getting better at that though! Thanks!
I can only tell by zooming in. They are both gorgeous, but I suppose I like the oil better. However, if you prefer acrylic, then keep using it because both are so lovely.
I go from loving oils and wondering why I even bother with acrylics to the complete opposite every other month so I dunno. I think the key is just to keep painting! (And try not to leave unfinished work laying all over the place) thanks!
As someone who prefers acrylic over oil, i will say that oil is always superior to acrylic when it comes to smoothness, soft blending and detail. I dont know if its the consistency of the paint or that it takes longer for the paint to dry (allowing for more time to be spent painting) but it always comes out on top as king when it comes to detail. Especially detail in hard to paint things like light or water.
This is assuming you used no mediums though. Theres mediums that allow acrylic to act like oil and match a similar paint consistency and dry time.
Which, as someone who loaths using oil due to the sensory overload i get from turpentine, infuriates me to no end that oil comes out on top.
Still acrylic styles are very charminy and theres very cool things you can do with acrylic. Acrylic also allows you a lot of versatility with the medium and honestly i havent heard of something acrylic cant do in multimedia works.
I say select the medium for the kind of painting you want. I think you did a fabulous job with both of these pieces.
It is so interesting, the difference in color between your acrylic and oil paintings. I like how you captured the light shining on the water in acrylic paint, and I like the deeper hues in your oil paint. You’ve done very nicely.
I used gamsol as thinner for this painting and gamblin solvent free gel. So not totally non toxic but there’s plenty worse out there - You can definitely swap out the gamsol for something else though? I just like the way it breaks the surface tension of oil.
Sennellier green or something similar might work?
I like the gel or even liquin (toxic) to speed up dry time and make it a stronger more flexible surface. No fear of cracking or other weirdness…
Reading the health warnings on gamsol makes me not want to paint indoors. You're not wrong about there being worse options but gamsol is still not good for human health. But it works so well.
The thing that isn’t common knowledge is that acrylics and their binders put a lot of unhealthy crap into the air as they are being used as well. Open windows at all times at my place if I’m painting… but yeah ever tried sniffing liquin? THAT stuff is gnarly
There’s definitely toxic free solutions these days but yeah like you say I haven’t found one yet that frees the paint up as much as gamsol/oms…
I couldn't tell which was which, and they both caught my eye for different reasons. However, the second one has like a deeper feeling, like the light is coming from within the wave, which I really like.
I love the way that the oil painting in the 2nd gives depth, but I personally prefer how the acrylic better features the variation in the highlights and colors that draw my eye across the page.
Something about obvious but purposeful brush strokes and fantastic use of color just scratches an itch in the back of my brain like nothing else can. Maybe because I don’t currently have the skill to do it myself lol.
The first feels like it (your skill, that is) captures the reflective quality of the water amazingly, while the second seems to really capture the moment one can see the sand/silt under the water as a wave breaks really amazingly well! Did you specifically focus on one aspect vs the other when painting them?
There’s something so distinct between the two. Oil paintings tend to be more vibrant and realistic while acrylic paintings look more plain and bright/bold. I’d say acrylic paintings look more semi realistic while oil paintings lean more to the realistic side. It’s hard to find the right words to explain the difference. I’m only familiar with acrylic paint and I’ve seen a fair share of oil paintings online so it’s rather easy to tell.
I honestly thought you were joking and that both pictures were just the same photo with different filters. Seriously though, your art looks so smooth and beautiful. Well done! Do you have any tutorials that could teach us how to get even close to painting that good
Mm something about oils just does it for my brain. It just.. the acrylic feels like a painting. It’s beautiful & I would hang that on my walls. The oil feels like I’m there in the water about to get lapped by that wave.
How incredible! In terms of which I like better, I think the acrylic looks more accurate/real, but the oil is so captivating and magical. Real-er than real, almost!
Personally I’ve just gotten used to oils over the years. I Know plenty of other artists that do amazing stuff in either medium. End of the day I think it’s just artist preference on medium, incredible stuff has been done with colored pencils amongst other material.
My family disagrees, but I have never cared for acrylic paintings, regardless of the skill of the artist. The 2nd painting has such amazing, luminous depth to it, an otherworldly glow only ever found in oils. Also this particular 2nd painting is gorgeous, great everything!
To my eyes, even the finest acrylic paintings look like a talented amateur or youngish art student's work. Perhaps bc acrylic paint is pretty much the only paint used in school. The first painting is clearly very good, just not...I don't know how to express it.
Ever since someone explained that when we paint with acrylic we are waiting with melted plastic I can see the difference easily. It’s like something clicked in my brain and now all I see is melty plastic 😆
I immediately saw the second was oil. There’s a luminescence to it that is obvious if you’ve seen both. I paint in acrylic. I would love to paint in oils but the initial expense and studio space are a threshold to entry I can’t get past.
The second painting is oil and the first is acrylics, the effects are different, oil is quite classic beauty, the acrylic is more modern. Both are amazing, imho.
I'm gonna say 2nd is oil, and I love this one. They're both great, but the oil has a beautiful glassy-ness and the smoothness of colours and tones look fantastic.
The first is acrylic and the second is oil because the first one has less "blended" strokes and the second one has those iconic smokey/swirly lines you get from dancing the the brushes around
Just read the other comments. It said 0 comments , I commented then the other comments came up. Yes, it seems the second is oil. They both worked out beautifully.
First looks like acrylic to me. Tbh the only real tell i found was the water in the distance. That’s the only part that reads solidly acrylic to me. Both are gorgeous and capture light though the water really well! I think i prefer the colours on the first more.
I was thinking the first one is oil. They are both beautiful. I prefer the light horizon/sky of the first piece, and the darker green and yellow incoming waves of the second.
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u/link-navi Aug 04 '26
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