Of all the mediums of paint out there, oil painting is without a doubt, in my mind, the worst form there is. From it’s annoying to deal with toxic materials to its time wasting process, there’s truly no worse medium to start painting with than there is oil painting.
As an artist, I cannot emphasize how important it is to explore various mediums as you continue down your artistic journey. No matter what your goals are for your art, exploring different mediums is a great way to shake things up if you’re in a rut and widen your skill range. With that being said, if you do plan on dipping your toes into other methods, please do not start with the utterly horrid world of oil painting
Through exploring different mediums in Ap Studio Art this year I learned that I often struggle with maintaining a well kept working area. I often spill paints or water cups every now and then. While with any other paints, this clumsy trait ultimately has little consequence as one could just quickly clean up any mistakes with relative ease.
With oil paints however, any slight slip up could become a potential health hazard. Since oil paint and the materials used with oil paint are all often toxic, artists are forced to jump through more hoops and take many more precautions to ensure that nothing bad happens when painting. This makes trying to enjoy oil painting more of a chore since I have to be on constant watch over where everything is, rather than enjoy the painting process.
Additionally, the time it takes for oil paint to dry further complicates the process. Even if you can get past the kidney-killing fumes which oil painting forces down your throat, you’ll realize just how in vain all your efforts were once the reality of how much time pilot painting burns sinks in. Most paints like water color or acrylic don’t take that long to dry. At most, you’d probably be waiting 2 hours for them to dry. But with even the slightest amount of oil painting reaching your canvas and congratulations, have fun waiting days for it to dry. That’s right, not minutes, not hours, but entire days for even thin layers to dry to the touch. It gets even worse with thicker layers with thicker layers which can sometimes take up to a week to fully dry. This makes oil painting infinitely more maintenance since the majority of the time, you’ll be waiting for your toxic paint to dry rather than actually painting.
