This past week I began painting with oils for the first time. I typically only paint with acrylics so I was excited to use a more complex medium. Acrylics are notorious for drying extremely quickly, but with oils I can make corrections days later. This has given me more freedom to pause and consider the canvas over time. I thought I would be too impatient for oil, but taking pause has been quite Zen.

Here’s a picture of my current progress on this piece (forgive the glare… there are windows galore in this room). It’s 18×24 and depicts a kitchen table with a bowl of fruit, a metal tea pot, a copper cooking pot, two glass bottles, some herbs, fish, and a bird that snuck in through the window. Pots, pans, and fish are all new subjects for me but I love how they turned out. I ended up painting a quick 5×7 group of fish and now have prints of that for sale in my website’s shop (https://smithantonides.com/product/the-fish-print/).

What do you think of oil paints versus other mediums? Link some of your work in the comments! I would love to see it.