Oil Paint vs Acrylic vs Watercolour: Which Is Best for Beginners?

Oil paint, acrylic, and watercolour are the three most popular types of paint for art — but they look, feel, and behave in very different ways. Choosing between them can feel overwhelming, especially if you're just starting out.

This guide breaks down the key properties, strengths, and limitations of each paint type in plain language. No art school jargon, no assumed knowledge. By the end, you'll have a clear picture of how oil, acrylic, and watercolour compare — and which one makes the most sense for the kind of painting you want to do.

Oil, Acrylic, and Watercolour at a Glance

Before the deep dive, here's a quick side-by-side comparison of the three main types of paint for canvas and paper art:

Property	Oil Paint	Acrylic Paint	Watercolour
Drying time	Days to weeks	10 min – a few hours	A few minutes
Difficulty level	Advanced	Beginner–advanced	Intermediate–advanced
Starter cost	€€€	€–€€	€–€€
Cleanup	Solvent / turpentine	Water (before it dries)	Water
Colour richness	Excellent — deep, luminous	Good (slightly darker when dry)	Soft, translucent
Durability	Centuries (when varnished)	Very good	Good (if framed and protected)
Fumes / safety	Solvent fumes — ventilation needed	Odourless, water-based, safe	Odourless, water-based, safe
Correcting mistakes	Easy (slow drying = long working time)	Easy (paint over once dry)	Difficult (translucent layers)
Painting surface	Canvas, wood (primed)	Almost anything	Watercolour paper

Now, let's look at each paint type in more detail.

Oil Paint: The Classic Choice

Oil paint has been the preferred medium of artists for over five hundred years. Vermeer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Monet all worked primarily in oils — and for good reason. No other paint type produces quite the same depth, richness, and luminosity of colour.

What's in Oil Paint?

Oil paints consist of pigment ground into a drying oil, most commonly linseed oil. It's this oil base that gives the paint its characteristic buttery texture and deep, saturated colour. Artist-grade oil paints have a high pigment concentration, making them intensely vivid and highly opaque.

Drying Time

The defining feature of oil paint is its slow drying time. A thin layer becomes touch-dry in 1–7 days; a thicker application can take weeks. Full curing (hardening all the way through) may require months. This is both the greatest advantage and the greatest frustration of working with oils.

The long drying time means you can blend colours directly on the canvas, rework passages, and build up layers with extraordinary control. But it also means a painting built up in many layers can take weeks to finish, because each layer needs to be substantially dry before the next goes on.

Working with Oil Paint

Oil painting follows a traditional rule: fat over lean. The first layer is thinned with solvent (turpentine or odourless mineral spirits) to create a lean base. Each subsequent layer contains a little more oil. This prevents the paint film from cracking as it dries — a problem that ruins many beginner oil paintings.

Oil paints excel at glazing (thin, transparent colour layers that create depth), impasto (thick, textured brushstrokes), and precise blending. The range of techniques available is immense, but mastering them takes time and practice.

Pros and Cons of Oil Paint

• ✅ Unmatched colour depth and luminosity
• ✅ Long working time — blend and correct freely on the canvas
• ✅ Extraordinary durability (centuries, when properly varnished)
• ✅ Vast range of techniques from glazing to impasto
• ❌ Very slow drying — layered paintings take weeks
• ❌ Requires solvents for thinning and cleanup (fumes, ventilation needed)
• ❌ Most expensive paint type (paints + mediums + solvents + brushes)
• ❌ Steeper learning curve than acrylic

Acrylic Paint: The Versatile All-Rounder

Acrylic paint is a relative newcomer — it became widely available only in the 1950s. Despite its short history, acrylic has become arguably the most popular paint type among hobbyists and the go-to recommendation for beginners. Andy Warhol and David Hockney both used acrylics extensively, demonstrating that the medium is perfectly capable of serious art.

What's in Acrylic Paint?

Acrylic paint consists of pigment suspended in an acrylic polymer emulsion — essentially a synthetic resin that dissolves in water while wet but forms a tough, flexible, water-resistant film once dry. Artist-grade acrylics have higher pigment loads than student-grade versions, producing richer colours and better coverage.

Drying Time

Acrylics dry quickly — a thin layer can be touch-dry in 10–30 minutes, and a thicker layer in a few hours. This allows you to build up multiple layers in a single session, making it possible to complete paintings much faster than with oils. The trade-off is less time for on-canvas blending. If you need more working time, a retarder medium can slow the drying process.

One thing to watch: acrylic colours shift slightly as they dry, typically becoming a touch darker. This is less noticeable with high-quality paints but worth being aware of when mixing colours.

Working with Acrylic Paint

Acrylic's biggest strength is sheer versatility. Thinned with water, it behaves like watercolour — transparent, flowing washes. Applied thickly, it mimics the texture and body of oil paint. It adheres to almost any surface: canvas, wood, paper, cardboard, ceramic, even glass and metal with proper preparation.

Mistakes are straightforward to fix. Wait for the paint to dry (a matter of minutes), then paint directly over the area. There's no need for solvents — everything cleans up with plain water, provided you don't let it dry on your brushes.

For a more detailed walkthrough of acrylic techniques, our paint by numbers beginner's guide covers the basics of working with acrylic paint on canvas.

Pros and Cons of Acrylic Paint

• ✅ Fast drying — paint multiple layers in one session
• ✅ Water-based, odourless, and safe for indoor use
• ✅ Affordable to start with
• ✅ Works on almost any surface
• ✅ Easy cleanup with water (while still wet)
• ✅ Extremely forgiving for beginners
• ❌ Colours can darken slightly as they dry
• ❌ Dried acrylic cannot be removed with water — clean brushes promptly
• ❌ Colour richness doesn't quite match oil paint
• ❌ Limited blending time on canvas without additives

Watercolour: The Master of Translucency

Watercolour — sometimes spelled watercolor in American English — is perhaps the most poetic of the three paint types. It's defined by its soft, flowing quality and beautiful translucency, characteristics that no other medium can quite replicate.

What's in Watercolour Paint?

Watercolour paints consist of pigment bound with gum arabic, a natural tree resin. They're fully water-soluble — not just when wet, but even after drying. This means a dried watercolour palette can always be reactivated with a splash of water, and paint is never wasted. Watercolours are sold as dry pans (hard cakes) or in tubes (a more liquid consistency).

Drying Time

Watercolour dries the fastest of the three paint types — typically within a few minutes, depending on how much water you've used and the absorbency of the paper. This rapid drying means you need to work with confidence and make decisions quickly, particularly when painting wet-on-wet (applying paint to a still-damp surface for soft, blurred edges).

Working with Watercolour

Watercolour painting follows a fundamentally different logic from oil or acrylic. Because the paint is translucent, you work from light to dark. The brightest areas of a watercolour painting are left unpainted — the white of the paper showing through. Dark tones are built up gradually through multiple transparent washes.

This means planning ahead is essential. You can't easily cover a mistake with a lighter colour the way you can with acrylic or oil. There's a degree of correction possible — wetting an area and lifting colour with a clean brush — but the options are limited compared to opaque paint types.

The reward for this discipline is a luminous, airy quality that acrylic and oil simply can't reproduce. Great watercolour paintings seem to glow from within, because the light passes through the pigment layers and reflects back off the white paper beneath.

Pros and Cons of Watercolour

• ✅ Beautiful translucency and luminosity — unique visual quality
• ✅ Highly portable (pans + a water brush fit in a pocket)
• ✅ Water-based, non-toxic, and completely odourless
• ✅ Paint never expires — reactivate dried pans with water
• ✅ Clean, minimal setup
• ❌ Difficult to correct mistakes (translucent = can't paint over easily)
• ❌ Requires proper watercolour paper (standard paper buckles and pills)
• ❌ Demands planning and technical knowledge
• ❌ Finished work is fragile — sensitive to moisture and UV light unless properly framed
• ❌ Less forgiving for beginners than acrylic

Which Paint Type Suits You Best?

The "best" paint type depends entirely on the kind of painter you are — or want to become. Here are four common profiles and what tends to work for each:

🎨 Complete Beginner — "I've never painted before"

Choose acrylic. It's the most forgiving medium by far. Fast drying, easy cleanup, no fumes, low cost, and simple mistake correction. Acrylic gives you the freedom to experiment without the frustration of slow drying times or irreversible errors. If you'd like to try acrylic painting with zero guesswork, paint by numbers kits come with everything you need — pre-mixed acrylic paints, brushes, and a numbered canvas — so you can focus purely on the experience of painting.

🖌️ Patient Perfectionist — "I want rich, gallery-quality colour"

Choose oil paint. If you enjoy slow, deliberate work and want the deepest possible colour saturation, oils are the answer. Be prepared to invest in supplies and ensure you have a well-ventilated workspace. Oil painting rewards patience and technique — it's deeply satisfying once you've learnt the fundamentals.

✈️ Traveller and Sketchbook Artist — "I want to paint on the go"

Choose watercolour. Nothing else comes close in terms of portability. A small watercolour set, a water brush pen, and a pocket sketchbook are all you need. Watercolour is ideal for travel sketches, nature studies, and spontaneous painting sessions. The learning curve is steeper, but the portability is unbeatable.

🔀 Undecided — "I just want to try painting"

Start with acrylic, then branch out. Acrylic teaches you the core fundamentals of painting — colour mixing, brush control, composition, layering — in the most accessible format. Once you're comfortable, you can move to oils for more depth or watercolour for more subtlety, with a solid base of skills already in place.

What Type of Paint Is Used in Paint by Numbers Kits?

If you've been reading this comparison and thinking "I'd like to try painting, but I don't know where to start" — this section is for you.

Paint by numbers kits use acrylic paint, and there are good reasons for that choice. Acrylic is the ideal paint for a guided painting kit because:

• Quick drying — you can paint adjacent numbered sections without colours bleeding into each other
• Opaque coverage — the paint covers the printed numbers and lines completely
• Water-based cleanup — rinse your brush between colours. No solvents needed
• Non-toxic and odourless — safe for painting at home, even around children and pets
• Vibrant colour — the pre-mixed acrylics in quality kits produce rich, vivid results

A paint by numbers kit is essentially a guided introduction to acrylic painting. You learn how the paint feels on the brush, how it covers the canvas, how layers work, and how colours interact — all without the pressure of creating a composition from scratch. Many people who start with paint by numbers find themselves moving on to freehand acrylic painting afterwards, with a level of confidence they never expected.

New to it? Our beginner's guide to paint by numbers walks you through the process step by step. You can also create a custom kit from your own photograph — a unique way to paint something personally meaningful.

If you're interested in using painting as a way to unwind and reduce screen time, our guide to digital detox activities explores why hands-on creative hobbies are so effective at replacing mindless scrolling.

Prefer something other than painting? Diamond painting uses tiny resin gems instead of paint — a different craft with the same calming, screen-free appeal. Our diamond painting guide for beginners covers everything you need to know.

Summary: Oil vs Acrylic vs Watercolour

All three paint types are excellent — for different reasons and different painters.

• Oil paint delivers unmatched colour richness and the longest working time, but demands patience, ventilation, and a larger budget.
• Acrylic paint is the most versatile, beginner-friendly, and affordable option. It dries fast, cleans up with water, and works on practically any surface.
• Watercolour produces uniquely luminous, translucent artwork and is the most portable choice, but it requires planning and technical skill that takes time to develop.

The goal isn't to find the objectively "best" paint — it's to find the one that matches your temperament, your workspace, and your goals. If you're not sure, start with acrylic. It's the most forgiving path into painting, and a paint by numbers kit is the easiest possible first step.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which paint is best for beginners — oil, acrylic, or watercolour?

Acrylic is the best choice for most beginners. It dries quickly, cleans up with water, produces no harmful fumes, and works on almost any surface. Mistakes are simple to fix — wait for the layer to dry and paint over it. Acrylic is also the paint type used in paint by numbers kits, making it the most accessible way to start painting with no prior experience.

Is oil painting harder than watercolour?

They're difficult in different ways. Oil painting demands patience (very slow drying times), solvent handling, and understanding of the fat-over-lean principle. Watercolour requires careful planning because mistakes are nearly impossible to cover — you can't paint light over dark. Most art instructors consider acrylic the easiest starting point, with oil and watercolour each presenting their own distinct challenges as you progress.

What is the difference between oil and acrylic paint?

The core differences lie in the binder and the drying process. Oil paint uses a natural oil binder (typically linseed oil) and dries through oxidation over days to weeks. Acrylic uses a synthetic polymer binder and dries through water evaporation in minutes to hours. In practice, this means oil paint offers richer colours and longer blending time on the canvas, while acrylic is easier to clean, safer to use indoors, and far more versatile in terms of surfaces it can be applied to.

Can you mix oil and acrylic paint?

Not directly on the palette — the two don't mix. However, you can layer them in one specific order: acrylic underneath, oil on top. Paint the base layer in acrylic, let it dry completely, then apply oil paint over it. The reverse doesn't work: acrylic painted over oil will crack and peel over time because it cannot bond properly to the oil surface. This layering technique is actually quite popular — acrylic for a quick underpainting, oil for the detailed finishing layers.

What type of paint is used in paint by numbers kits?

Paint by numbers kits use acrylic paint. Acrylic is ideal for guided painting kits because it dries quickly (preventing colours from bleeding into adjacent sections), provides opaque coverage that hides the printed numbers, cleans up with water, and is completely non-toxic. The pre-mixed acrylic colours in quality kits produce vibrant, long-lasting results that look impressive once the canvas is complete.