[ad_1]
1. Drying time
One of oil paint's most useful properties is its really slow drying time. This has three useful advantages: the first is that you can take your time to complete a painting. You do not have to worry about rushing to get a painting finished in one sitting because you can leave it and come back to it a bit later, picking up from where you left of. The second is that you can experiment with mixing colors a lot more because you have a lot more time before the paint dries; you have more freedom to blend and manipulate the paint to create the desired effects. The third is that you can easily correct mistakes. Use an old rag to wipe mistakes off, or even use a painting knife to do a bit of scraping if you have to. Remember to take extra care when correcting mistakes.
2. Safety
Some oil pigments do contain toxic substances. As a precaution, always check the labeling on a paint tube to see if there's anything potentially dangerous in the paint. The good thing is that lots of manufacturers have started to produce non-toxic oil paints. The downside to these newer, non-toxic paints is that they do not have exactly the same as oil paints, so they may take a bit of getting used to. It's easy enough to work with oils and still be safe: be sure you do not ingest or inhale paint; you also do not want to get any of it on your skin. While painting, be sure to work in an area that's well ventilated – some people have reported feeling dizzy or nauseous after working with oils in a small, enclosed space for a long period of time. You should also avoid eating, drinking or smoking while painting.
3. Colors and appearance
With oil paints, you have a very broad spectrum of colors available for you to use. This is because most of them use synthetic pigments, which allow for a much greater variety of colors than natural pigments. They also blend very well together, allowing for subtle shades and hues of all sorts of different colors. The colors you get from oil painting have a rich, buttery and kind of luminous effect. You'll notice how some oil paintings have an almost jewel-like appearance, with a great sense of depth to them. Oil paint has long been very popular in Western Art thanks the great variety of colors it allows you to paint with and the great effects it gives a finished painting.
4. Cost
Generally speaking, oil paints can be quite expensive; they're usually more expensive than acrylics and watercolours. As with these other types of paint, you'll find both student grade and artist grade oil paints; student grade paints are cheaper and, as their name suggests, are designed for beginners, whereas artist grade paints are a bit more expensive and are aimed at artists with a bit more experience and skill. Oil paintings can appreciate very much in value, though this does not necessarily mean that each and every oil painting is going to be worth lots just because it's painted in oils.
[ad_2]
Source