Paintings

Wall art can be painted nearly onto anything you can

hang on a wall. Some artists even use aluminum sheets as

a painting surface to give life to brilliant works. The most

popular medias to paint on however are canvas, paper,

and board.  And by far the most popular paint used

throughout the centuries of wall art has been oil paint.

Oil paint has been around since the cave people!

Well, maybe not since cave people, but it has been

used for over four thousand years. It is the most tried

and tested media in all of art history. Artists can easily

predict how it will behave in various environments, how long

it will last on different surfaces, and can paint on a canvas

layer-upon-layer-upon-layer when working with oils.

The layering of oil paint requires a half-day

drying time for each layer painted, but this long process

permits a level of realism and detail no other painting media

allows. This is one of the reasons most paintings you see in

a museum are oil painting.

The other great media used by artists, which allows

for good definition and detail, is acrylic paint.  These

paints are considerably less toxic than oils and require less

ventilation to work with. They have a faster drying time, but

are much more difficult to layer.  Acrylics also come in

extremely bright and vivid colors; toning them down and

creating the color gamma desired for realistic paintings can

take years of practice.

Most of us associate watercolors with childhood

memories. But in the fine art world watercolor is a very

popular media among artists and veteran collectors.

Painting in watercolor is quite difficult to master because of