9 reasons to adore OIL PAINT

1. FORGIVING - Oil is, even today, still one of the easiest and most forgiving mediums you can work in. Creating an oil painting is in fact relatively easy compared to other mediums such as watercolor or pastels.

2. EASY TO CONTROL - Oil paints are easy to put onto a canvas or panel. You just put some paint on your brush and rub it on the canvas or panel. The paint will generally not run or move.

3. SMOOTH BLENDING - Oil paints are king of the ring when blending colors together and creating subtle blends. Wet-on-wet is the sure fire way to get a smooth transition in your painting.

4. COLOR STABILITY - One great property of oil paints is that they don't change color when they dry as opposed, for example, to acrylics or watercolor. Oils stay pretty-much the same for a long period of time (however, in a very long period of time, oil paintings have tendency to yellow).

5. EASY TO REMAKE - It's simple, just scrape the paint off with a paint knife and repaint whatever it was you scrapped off.

6. OPEN FOR EXPERIMENTS - Oils are also amenable to a whole series of techniques each of which yields a different look and feel. One example of such a technique is glazing. In this technique, several thin layers of transparent paint are put on top of each other. Each layer must be thoroughly dry before the next one is applied. Once done light is reflected off each layer resulting into an unusual luminosity and brightness.

7. LONGER WORKING / DRYING TIME - if you have plenty of time set aside for your painting, oils can be fantastic. It gives you the flexibility to start a painting and than come back to it the next day and continue straight where you left off. The paint on your palette will still be wet and pliable, the colors on your canvas can still be blended together.

8. VARIOUS SUPPORTS - Oils can be used on any number of grounds - canvas, panel canvas, wood, glass, paper, etc., when done correctly with excellent and durable results.

9. TESTED WITH TIME - Oil paints have been used for many centuries, their properties are very well known.

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