Oil Media

One of the great benefits of oil is its “open” time before oxidizing and hardening. I can keep a palette of paint I did not use up under cover of a wax palette paper and that can be enough to keep it going for days instead of hours. An artist does learn that some pigments oxidize and dry faster than others, though. We also learn of properties like potency of the hue when mixing, transparency and other material aspects. I do love that I have gotten to a place where I know how to get to a color. I can look at things out in the world and imagine what exactly I would mix to get there, But, going back to a great feature of oil, as a painter: its color stays quite true and doesn’t shift other than over a much longer arc of time, through oxidizing. In the shorter term, they may get more matte or want to pull toward a canvas but the hue out of the tube, is what will be there a week later. That is not true of acrylics.