In part one we covered different ways artists approach their creative process and this brings us to a few different mediums and surfaces used for paintings. Mediums such as oil, acrylic, watercolor and others are just vehicles to deliver pigment by way of a brush, and pastel is basically raw pigment in stick form (like chalk) rubbed on. There are others as well, but for ease I'll stick to these.

Is one better than the other? No, not really, they are just different and each has its own properties and characteristics. You will hear a lot about oil, which is clearly the most collected medium and certainly has that old masters thing going for it, but again remember father time, acrylic (a synthetic medium) is much newer and wasn't available back then. Many remember houses use to be painted with oil and now most are painted in something similar to acrylic called latex. So why, you might ask? Oil paint is loosing in two ways, the environment and clean up. I have heard that pretty soon oil paint for houses will only be available in one quart cans, thus making it almost too expensive for anyone to use, this is being done for the environment. Oil paint also "use to" have lead in it, which was mainly there to make the paint more opaque for good coverage and I think durability as well. Those days are gone, but with regards to it and clean up, oil paints require solvents to do the job. Acrylic, like watercolor, both being water based, clean up with water and is a lot safer overall. I don't think artist oil paints will ever fall victim to that of the house paint, but new formulations exist such has water soluble oil paint, which have had their molecular structure altered to make them "in a sense" clean up with water and be less caustic too. Still from an art use stand point, both have their pros and cons and reasons why artists like one over the other. Oil has two big things going for it, depth and blendability. The reason for the blendability is because it takes days to dry to the touch and weeks and or months to completely dry. This can have its drawbacks for handling a wet painting, but for working out side, it actually helps, as sun on your painting won't dry it so quickly, bringing everything to a halt, your brush included! Whereas, acrylic dries in minutes, nice for doing detail work, but very difficult to blend and lacks a bit of depth. Both allow for glazing, "building transparent layers of paint" but most traditionalists still use oil. Watercolor, a transparent medium, is spread across paper as a very wet solution and dries with the water evaporating leaving just the pigment. It dries fairly quickly, is great for detail work and can be blended skillfully through washes, as in gradient skies. One of the drawbacks with it as a medium though is it is mostly done on paper and all paintings, whether they be watercolor, oil, acrylic or pastel, should absolutely be under glass and some people don't like that look. I have worked with all, pastel the least, watercolors more so years ago, but I still, depending on what I am painting, use oil or acrylic. Most of my paintings are oil, but I have certain very detailed commissions I do where acrylic just gives better results. So, to me they are simply tools of the trade. There is little question though, that oil is still the most popular.

As for what paintings are painted on, well, there is definitely more here than meets the eye because most of the time when you are looking at a painting, especially not under glass, you can't really tell. Some examples are canvas, panels of different woods and a variety of papers. With wood, some are more stable than others, but with all wood products the most important thing is the application of several coats of gesso. Like a primer, gesso acts as both to aid in adhesion and as a buffer to protect the paint from the natural acids in wood fibers. With canvas the same applies, but canvas in itself is a somewhat generic term covering many things that are canvas in like. Without question, most artist canvas is made from cotton, but it's not really something professional artists should be painting on in my opinion and I'm not alone in this thinking by far. Cotton as a fiber, is neither tight nor very strong so, it is not the best for longevity and can be susceptible to mold. If you look at the back and the canvas in fairly white, it's likely cotton, whereas linen, a far better choice, would be more of a dark sand color. These linens come mostly from Belgium, Italy or France and are much more expensive, but let's face it, paintings that are expensive, should be painting on like materials. No one likes cotton blue jeans more than I, but they are not what I would normally choose for fine dining. So, there you have it, there are many different types of art, mediums, surfaces to paint on, subject matter and price ranges…luckily, there are just as many different types of taste in art to go around. As I always say, buy what you like and enjoy it.