In the realm of the art world, there is many different options of mediums. Usually, I have stuck to acrylic paint, printmaking, and some mixed media pieces. It’s fine to stick with what you’re good at; it’s usually how you learn to better your skills. But I always wanted to try my hand at painting with oil paints. We had them in my advanced art classroom and I was allowed to do whatever I wanted, as long as I had a finished piece by the deadline, so I thought I would just try it out right? Wrong.

   Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer                              The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt van Rijn

Let me just say that oil paints are way harder to paint with than you would think. I’m not sure where in my head it got stuck that it would be easy, but I was horribly, horribly mistaken. For those of you that don’t know, oil paint does not dry for a long time. It makes it easy to work on a piece over time without worrying about the paint drying before you are able to finish a section. It’s the medium of some of the most famous paintings of all time. Oil paint can be extremely intricate, beautiful, and can mimic real life almost like a mirror.

In my experience though, it was a disaster. Acrylic paint, which I used often, dries fairly quickly. Because of this, I was used to being able to lean on parts of the canvas as I was painting. When I did this with oil paint, it ended up getting all over me. Another fun fact about oil paint: it is hard to get off of your skin and even more ruthless on clothing. In the midst of my fashion fiasco I had also managed to smear the paint of the section I had spent hours working on meticulously. At that point, I was so frustrated by the fact I was now wearing more paint than my actual canvas that I gave up and scraped off all the paint and started over with acrylic paint.

So let this be a lesson to everyone that ever wants to try a new medium in art: make sure you know what you are getting into when you start a project. It is so much better to take the time to properly learn instead of running into it blind like I did.