Bonus Episode: What's the Difference Between Media?

I’m fast at work editing the first episodes of Season Two! So let’s use this time to dig into some important Art 101 ideas.

And we are starting at the beginning with an exploration of the difference between the three most popular media: oil, watercolor and acrylic.

Take a listen and check out the paintings below. Can you guess which is which?

OK, I started with a hard one. You can rule out watercolor. Watercolor is very transparent and you can’t lay it on very thickly. (It’s binder, gum arabic, can only get so thick before it gets weird.) But this also could be oil. Mark Mehaffey is excellent at creating soft edges, but if you look closely, you can still see the hard edges that are often characteristic of acrylic paintings. (That drying time!) You can notice the hard edges on the outside shapes of the trees.

Once you get comfortable with the different media, you’ll start to see watercolors from a mile away. There are a few things watercolorists can do that no one else can do. And Anne Abgott loves to take advantage of those aspects of watercolor that make it unique. For example, in her episode, Abgott talks about how she mingles color. She will wet an area with water and then add colors into the area and let them mix on the paper. You can see this in full affect in the egg shadows. That’s an effect that would be very very very hard to get with oil because oils don’t move around as well as watercolors.

Let’s try another one.

Can you see the way the colors have mixed on the paper? That’s a dead give away that it’s watercolor. Peggi Habets also mixes pigments on the paper. Unlike Anne Abgott (above), Habets drops in color.

OK now:

It’s true, this could be an oil painting. But look at those edges. Really look. You’ll notice how hard many of them are. Jane Davies uses other techniques to deal with some of that hardness.

Next up:

More hard edges! Again, this could be oil painting. And in fact, Annie O’Brien Gonzales also paints in oil. It’s fun to compare her oil and acrylic work side by side.

From afar, it would be easy to confuse Chris Krupinski’s hyber-realistic paintings with oil. But take a closer look and they quickly show their watercolor…colors. Those shadows especially. You’ll start to notice the tell-tale mingling of colors. Part of that mingling is how pigment moves around once you lay it down. Occasionally you’ll see a slight granulating affect, and that is a tell tale sign you’re looking at a watercolor.

How’d you do? Can you spot the difference between media? Which snagged you?