Oil Paints vs Watercolors

Often, picking between Oil Paints and Watercolors can be a challenge, whether you are new to the world of paint or simply can't decide which media would be best for the project you have in mind, after all it's not hard being spoilt for choices considering the number of options we have. Here's a breakdown of the most important differences to keep in mind before you commit to one of them for your next artwork.

Mistakes are easily reversible with oil paints:  Watercolor mistakes, although solvable, can often be tricky, especially with the added risk of ruining the entire paper. Oil paints are much easier to deal with in this respect; one can simply scrape the paint off with a palette knife or wipe it off with a rag. Moreover, since oil paints are more opaque, it's easier to paint over over your mistakes- even when painting white on a dark color. 

Vibrant colors are often more tiresome to achieve with watercolors: Oil paints are inherently much more pigmented and hence vibrant. Depending on what effect you want, it might be a lot easier to get high amounts of color with oils. An alternative to oil is gouache paints which again are more opaque than watercolors so give the same benefits as oil paints.       

                             

      

Watercolors dry way faster: This of course can be both a blessing and a curse and depends completely on what final product you want. With oils you can push around the color for hours after you've placed them down, while everything is near permanent as soon as you place it down with watercolors. This means that oils may be better to give variation and depth to your work whereas watercolors is the way to go if are going for a layered look.

It is easier to add deeper shadows and brighter highlights with oil paints:  Oil paints are slightly translucent meaning you can extensively use glazing and underpaintings to create more depth; watercolors are too transparent to easily create the same depth.

You can layer up oil paints more:  When working with watercolors on paper there is often a limit to the amount of layering the paper can withstand before it's ruined. This makes oil paints better for multiple layers as well as glazing.

It's easier to get a natural "messy" look with watercolors: This messy effect, which is optimal for nature/floral themed work, can be tried with oil too but it takes too much effort to make that look appealing.

Oil paints come across as more 3-dimensional: The translucent nature of oil paints along with the fact that they are glossy, unlike watercolors which are largely matte, allows one to get more hyper-realistic effects with oils rather than watercolors.

At the end of the day, the medium you go with completely depends on what works better for the final work you have in mind and how comfortable you are with each of these, it is ,however, important to keep experimenting with different materials to get better and not stop growing.