Oil Painting vs Watercolor: Which is Best for Beginners? — Irish Surrealist Paintings by Leanne Rath (2024)

Have you been looking to start painting, and find yourself wondering what's the best artistic medium for learning to paint? It's hard for us to know what to start with when there's so much available on the market, and it's easy to find yourself spoilt for choice. I started off with watercolors and was painting with them for years, but now that I'm an avid oil painter I'm not so sure it was the best choice for learning to paint. Watercolors are more frequently used in schools and beginner's classes for teaching painting, but are they really the best for starting out? Here are a few reasons why you might be inclined to pick oil paints (or, depending on your tastes and style, might not be!):

With watercolors, as I'm sure you know, mistakes are tricky to get rid of, especially without damaging the paper. With oil paints, thankfully, it's a much easier process; you can simply scrape back the paint with a palette knife (or, if the paint layer is thin, wipe it off with a rag) and paint over it. Because oil paints are more opaque, it's much easier to paint over mistakes, even if you're painting white onto a dark color.

Oil paints are much more vibrant and pigmented than most watercolors. Depending on what effect you want, it might be easier to achieve high amounts of colour with oils! Saying that, if you don't want to compromise on colour but you prefer working with watercolours, you should try gouache paints; they're far more opaque than watercolour which also means it's slightly easier to get rid of mistakes!

This is both a blessing and a curse, alike to acrylic's fast drying time; with oils, it's much easier to push around paints after you've placed them down for hours or even days, while everything is near permanent as soon as you place it down with watercolours. It's also good if you want to layer up your watercolours, so it's somewhat of a blessing also!

Oil paints are slightly translucent, which means you can use underpaintings and glazing to create deeper shadows and brighter highlights in your works. Watercolours are slightly too transparent to create the same depth of colour, in my opinion (feel free to prove me wrong!).

While it's harder to get rid of mistakes, watercolours are no doubt easier to get off of surfaces, clothes, et cetera; since they're water-based, they're removable from most surfaces with water or by going through a wash (although some pigments can stain; magenta is always one I've noticed being particularly bad for this). Oil colours, however, have to be removed near immediately with either solvents or a baby wipe from surfaces and are near impossible to get off of clothes (although I've noticed small stains might be improved by scrubbing with a baby wipe while the paint is fresh).

Watercolour materials are easy to source, and they're even easy to bring on the go if you have water brushes. Oils, however, generally require a larger amount of supplies and aren't so easy to make a travel kit for. If you're looking for something on the go without the hassle, watercolours are definitely the better go-to.

Some watercolours can separate after a while of mixing, and it's also hard to mix large amounts of watercolour shades at once. Because watercolours are flat, they also take up a lot of space on the palette, while oil paints are viscous and hold their shape, so you can fit a lot of colours on a palette. It's also easier to slightly change the colours you have mixed without losing the original colour, whileas there's a risk of corrupting the original colour with watercolours because the pigment flows through the water so easily. And, of course, if you like to hold your palette at a slight angle, watercolours will be your biggest nightmare as they'll likely drip into each other and mix together!

Of course, you can do layers of watercolours, but there's often a limit to what the paper can actually handle. This makes oil paints better for underpainting and glazing effects, which would be trickier to do with watercolours due to the paper's ability to hold and the transparency of it.

It's easy to splat watercolours around to get a pretty "messy" effect. It's much more difficult to achieve messy effects that look appealing with oil paints, unless you're going for thick impasto painting... then go for oils!!

This might play a big part in how your painting appears after it's dry. Of course, with oil paints, you can get matte varnish if you want them to be less glossy, but it's difficult to make watercolour paints appear glossy. This can be easier to take photos of, however!

Because of the transparency of the layers, it's easier to create depth in oil paints through glazing and underpainting for shadows and highlights. This makes it easier to achieve more hyperrealistic effects with oils rather than watercolours.

Even if you're painting on a cheap surface such as MDF, watercolour paper is likely cheaper per painting. However, if you want a cheap solution for now and you're set on oils, try priming thick paper with gesso; it's better than it sounds, but perhaps not the best for archival quality.

Oil Paints can seem intimidating, but if you're looking to get a more realistic effect from your paintings, it's often the better choice. If you like a beautiful natural "messy" look (why not go mad with washes and splotches of paint?) and want an easy "pick up and go" material, watercolors might just be your best bet. Which are you going to choose, and why? Comment below!

And if you're interested in learning more about oil painting, why not check out my article on oil painting for beginners?