what are the difference in painting with watercolor, accrylic, and oil?

Question

i have all three, and canvas' and i want to paint but im a beginner really and i dont know ..stuff

Answer 1

It depends on your personal preference. I like to use acrylic because it dries fast and if you make a "mistake" it's easy to fix. Oil takes longer to dry so if you're not worried about time it's good to try. watercolor works best on watercolor paper which is thicker than other papers and absorbs water well. If you're a beginner use the acrylics first and work up from there.

Answer 2

Well, booly, some of the most fun you can have with paint is just finding out what it will do for you. It's all an experiment.
Watercolor is a pigment made to dissolve in water. It's usually transparent because it can be thinned a lot with water. There are canvasses that are made for watercolor, but I prefer paper -the higher the grade the better. But the cheapset is okay for experimenting. They dry almost instantly, so they are called, "immediate."
Acrylic paint also dissolves in water, and is thicker, but does not have to be used with water. It will work on paper, but most people prefer to use it on canvas. You can get from transparent to opaque looks with it. It's the most versitile, and often the cheapest, especially on the Internet.They can dry quickly, or with mediums, dry more slowly, even mimicking oil paint.
Next is oil, the most difficult, but worth it. Oils are the paint of the Renaissance. They take the longest to dry, sometimes the underlayer can take up to 7 years to dry. Though chemists tell us they never truely dry. They can be painted over without ruining the prior painting, if thin, by the next day. There are mediums to make this faster, but most of us don't use these. These are the most expensive of the three you have, and often need more education to understand what mediums to use and why. The oils go on canvases and specially prepared boards, but not paper because the oil will bleed through.
Brushes: Do not, I repete, DO NOT ever use brushes for one kind of media (oil, watercolor, etc.) with brushes for another kind. You will ruin the materials of both kinds of art. I put different colors of electrical tape on each type of brush, because I will forget which is which when I get busy.

Answer 3

You can come and ask at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/artist-painting2/ if you want, basically paint is a mixture of two different substances. A Pigment, and something to bind it together, a medium.

The oldest paints were just dust, and dirt's drawn onto the fragile walls of caves, most of these were dry pigments, but modern chalks are dyes soaked into chalk, or dust treated with a water based gum, like gum Arabic.

Treating pigment with a water-based gum makes a simple watercolour, and these are washed into an absorbent surface. Before the invention of paper, this was wet plaster, which when dry would form a fresco. The Egyptians perfected this method.

Pigment could also be added to wax (encaustic, and painted with a warm brush and irons) this was used on wooden boards.

Pigment was then added to egg white/yolk (tempera) and added to wooden boards treated with animal glue and chalk substance called gesso. As the wooden panels became bigger, so strips of linen sealed the joints.

Eventually some Italian bright spark had the idea of stretching a linen canvas over a wooden frame in the 13th Century, treating it with gesso and painting on that. The Canvas was born.

Translucent colour is made from mixing the pigment with oil medium, invented by the Dutch in the 15th century, and oil painting s was created. They have to be applied fat over thin layers to stop the surface cracking as the oil dries, and it is the hardest techinique to master. Linseed medium can be thinned with turpentine, and fattened with wax to make a matt finish. Adding slow drying oils like poppy make the finish more gloss.

In the 16th century, watercolour made an emergence with the appearance of cheap paper, but gouache was invented by thickening up the gum with move translucent glues. Modern plastic glue added to that water colour paint makes PVA paint, and poster colours.

Plastic resins - acrylics appeared in the 1940's and acrylic paints are more forgiving than oil paints, also the medium can be 'watered down' - diluted - with water. There are also new mediums that allow you to imitate all the other mediums of the past.

Get your self to an art class, and practice with the cheapest paint on paper first. Learn to master one element at a time, I suggest one colour (dark) and white, and make a monotone image, in this way you will learn to handle the brushes with the pigment.

Answer 4

Dont use watercolors on canvas...best to use them on watercolor paper. Acrylics and oils work well on canvas though...acylics are used with water as the medium while oils you would use some other thinner...usually something like lindseed oil. Pick up a book on oil painting to help you find what you would use.