Is It Easier to Paint With Watercolor or Acrylic?

Between watercolor and acrylic, watercolor is the more commonly used type of paint. In fact, watercolors’ bright pigments can be found in images on labels, animations, illustrations, card stores, etc. But does this omnipresence indicate watercolor is an easier paint type to work with?

So, Is It Easier to Paint With Watercolor or Acrylic? Between watercolor and acrylic, acrylic is easier to paint with. Watercolor is commonly used, but that doesn’t make it beginner-friendly. Acrylics dry out quickly and, thanks to their opacity, offer better coverage too. The opaqueness also means you may use acrylic over an already painted area.

Keep reading to learn more about the two types of paint in a bit more detail, their pros and cons, similarities and differences, and pretty much everything the amateur artist in you would like to know about them before you could wield those paintbrushes. Let’s dive in: Is It Easier to Paint With Watercolor or Acrylic?

Watercolor Paint: An Overview 

Watercolor is basically colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder, such as synthetic glycol or gum Arabic. The pigment provides the color, and the binder ensures the pigments stick to the canvas. The binder may also help produce a brighter hue by holding together the pigment particles on the paper or painting surface.

Gum Arabic is a commonly used binder. However, some watercolor paints could come with synthetic binders. To alter the pigment’s color, viscosity, durability, and hiding, watercolor paints may also have honey, glycerin, ox gall, honey, and preservatives thrown in.

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Watercolors made with just gum Arabic and pigment would dry out hard. For this reason, the paint includes a plasticizer and moisturizer for extended life. The added constituents are also used to dissolve the paint and make them softer at the same time. These additives also ensure the paint doesn’t dry too quickly. Corn syrup and, at times, honey are the moisturizers typically used.

Watercolor can be only used at its “maximum power” on paper – watercolor paper, to be specific. Watercolor paper is designed to absorb the paint efficiently. Also, the paper is available in different thicknesses and forms and could be cold or hot-pressed and rough or smooth to the touch. 

As far as opacity goes, watercolors could range from opaque, semi-transparent, to transparent. They are invariably transparent, and the resulting vibrancy is quite desirable.

Minimal Equipment Requirements 

Watercolor is not the most affordable paint type, but its equipment requirements are fairly minimal. A small watercolor tube and water are all that you need to get started or even paint surfaces by the yard. 

To get rolling with watercolor painting, you’ll typically need:

• Travel-friendly or portable set of colors
• Paintbrush with an extremely narrow tip or point
• Watercolor paper
• Spray bottle with some water

Not to mention, watercolor is ideal for use with large painting areas or canvases that don’t require complete filling-in.

Works Great Outdoors 

If it’s spring or summer and you’d like to paint outdoors, watercolors are excellent. If the watercolor dries while painting outside, dip your brush in water and remoisten the paper or paint. You may even add some water to revive dried watercolor based on the kind of pigments you use.

If you’re looking to buy a set of paintbrushes for your watercolor painting sessions, take a look at Xubox Paint Brushes. You may buy these as a single pack or have up to 10 brushes per set.

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Learning to Paint With Watercolor Can Be Complicated 

Learning to paint with watercolor requires some patience. For starters, it’s imperative to get the water-to-pigment ratio right. Timing is key too, which you learn with practice too. 

Once you get a solid understanding of the amount of water to be used, your paintings would come out much better. In other words, the colors would come out just the way you intended. Initially, when you’re still learning your way around watercolors, the shades could be off.  

Drying and Color Fading Issues 

Upon drying, watercolors could look completely different. If you liked how the painting looked when it was wet, you might not find it that great after the paint completely dries. After a few hours of having completed the painting, the colors would look dull and pale.

The look that results when the various color layers blend is invariably muddy. This is because watercolors rehydrate with every subsequent layer, remoistening all previously applied colors and blending them in the process. To ensure watercolor paintings stay pure in color and look clean, fewer layers of overlapping colors are recommended.

If you are new to watercolor painting, getting the shade right could be extremely challenging. Even seasoned painters, now and again, struggle to get the intended look and feel with watercolors.

Most painters make up for this imminent drop in the shade by boosting the colors slightly while the paint is wet. However, the damp paint may look a bit too harsh due to this, and some painters may, as a result, not resort to the practice.

What Is Acrylic Paint?

Acrylic paint is completely synthetic, fast-drying paint consisting of acrylic resin, a pigment, and a binder. The paint is water-soluble but turns water-resistant upon drying. 

Unlike watercolor, acrylics could be used on any surface, including watercolor paper, canvas, and wood. However, the canvas is the most commonly used surface. Also, you may or may not use a primer before applying the paint.  

There are different types of acrylic paint, with variations in their viscosity, drying time, etc. With acrylic, you can formulate resins to various fluidity levels, so different kinds of acrylic paints are possible. 

Based on the amount of paint altered with acrylic gels, pastes, or mediums, or diluted with water, the completed acrylic painting could resemble an oil painting or gouache, a watercolor, or have certain traits other paints cannot attain.

Acrylic paint is also quite versatile. In fact, no other paint type (including watercolor paint) is as customizable as acrylic. Pastes, gels, and fluids let you play with the paint’s drying times, sheen, texture, and transparency. You can also combine mediums and other paint elements to attain the desired look and feel.

Why is it Ideal to Use Acrylic Paint if You’re Learning to Paint

Start with acrylic paint if you’ve never held a paintbrush before. You’ll also learn certain painting basics that would come in handy when you learn to paint with watercolor. Acrylic paint is not just easy to get started with, but it is relatively easier to master as well. Watercolor paint, on the other hand, will test your patience quite a bit.

Longer Life and Consistent Look 

Acrylic paint has a longer shelf-life than watercolor. And it’s not just about how long the paint lasts, but also how it looks throughout the period. Watercolors degrade considerably over a period. Even oil paint is not immune to the effects of time. The binder found in oil paint, for instance, turns yellow with time, causing a subtle glow on classic master paintings.

Acrylic paints, on the other hand, are colorfast. In other words, acrylics do not turn yellowish over time. Also, the binder found in acrylics is typically white, but it dries clear. This means acrylics seem lighter on canvas at first. As the binder dries or turns clear, it dries darker. This becomes quite apparent with painting portraits.

Helps Cover Up Errors 

As mentioned before, acrylic paint has great opacity. When applying color atop any dry, painted area, the topmost color would completely eclipse the colors underneath, even if it is a lighter shade. The color below is relatively intense.

Acrylic paint can achieve this because it doesn’t rehydrate, unlike watercolor. This means you can easily cover up your painting mistakes with acrylic paint. When used wet, the paint blends beautifully on canvas without requiring any pre-mixing. As a beginner, you’ll be happy about both these features.

A Smooth Blend Is Not Always a Given

Though adding water can remedy things, a smooth blend has never been an acrylic paint’s forte. Blending with acrylics could be annoying due to their drying speed. The almost-instant drying turns into a real headache if you’re working on a relatively big project. 

In such cases, it would be next to impossible to ensure the same finish across the canvas. Anything at or above 6 ft (1.8 m) x 4 ft (1.2 m) could hinder a smooth acrylic blend.

As mentioned above, certain mediums could help extend acrylic paint’s drying time. Besides water, retarder and gel are excellent mediums to slow down drying times. If you are working on a large-scale acrylic painting, you need the Liquitex 126704 Professional Slow-Dri Fluid Retarder. For soft gel gloss, take a look at Golden Artist Colors Soft Gel Gloss.

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Not Recommended for Outdoor Painting Sessions

Painting outdoors with acrylic paint could be quite challenging. Since acrylic paint is plastic, the temperatures outside and the sun could quicken up the drying process. If the temperatures are extreme, the paint could even dry up when it is still on the brush.

Similarities and Differences Between Watercolor Paint and Acrylic Paint 

Acrylic and watercolor may seem like living in two different universes, for the results achieved with the two mediums could look dramatically different. Acrylics deliver an opaque, flat, and very plastic-like finish. On the other hand, watercolors help create a luminous appearance, replete with tonal variations – of course, based on the quantity of water used with the paint.

Here are some similarities and disparities between the two that the beginner painter in you might appreciate:

• Both watercolor and acrylic paints are water-soluble. The way they are used with water, however, could be different.
• Compared to acrylics, watercolors usually undergo much more dilution. The increased water content is the major reason why watercolors are more on the transparent side.
• Color shifting is not just an attribute of watercolors, but it is characteristic of them too. However, unlike watercolors, acrylic paints look darker once dried. This is because the “milkiness” associated with acrylics disappears once the paint dries.
• Watercolor paints can be mixed on a traditional palette before applying them on canvas. Acrylic paints, however, cannot be squeezed out as they dry rapidly. If you’d like to squeeze out acrylics beforehand, you will have to push out the exact quantity you’ll need for the job and add some water or delaying agent to the mix.
• Watercolors are easy to dilute and, therefore, their thickness can be determined easily. You either add water or throw in some paint for a thinner or thicker consistency. However, with water usage comes thinking how water interacts with other materials; we speak of “the bleeding“. The consistency of acrylic paint could be changed with a medium.
• Acrylic paint is man-made and, therefore, cheaper than watercolor. The cost difference may not seem much. But if you are looking to buy a serious amount of paint supplies, you’ll be able to appreciate the cost savings with acrylic a lot more.
• The longevity of any paint depends on multiple things, such as temperature, light, paint quality, and humidity. Generally, acrylic paints last longer than watercolors. And if well-preserved or kept in museum-like conditions, a specimen of acrylic painting could last several decades or even centuries.  

Giving Acrylic Paint the Watercolor Twist 

Both watercolor and acrylic paint have their pros and cons. If you are a fan of acrylic paint for its zero color shifts, but you also like watercolor for its fluidity, you could hack acrylic paint to work like watercolor.

Upon being diluted with water, acrylic typically looks and even behaves like standard watercolor paint. However, acrylic does not completely become watercolor. A few differences remain, which make this amalgamation quite interesting.

• First, each color layer would dry true to its color. Unlike watercolor, the wet acrylic won’t dry lighter. The colors remain as deep when dry like they were when wet. In other words, no more unpleasant fading surprises.
• Secondly, you could apply multiple transparent wash layers into your acrylic paint without getting a muddy appearance. By letting the washed spots to dry and settle on, the color becomes permanent. There won’t be any rehydrating when another color wash is applied on top of the underlying layer. This ensures a clean outcome.

Diluted acrylic also comes in handy when you try to create a silhouette landscape. The entire painting background would have to be washed first and later allowed to dry completely with standard watercolor. The trees would then be painted over the background thereafter.

With diluted acrylic, however, trees could be painted first. Since acrylic is plastic, it would repel washes after it is completely dry. If it were dried watercolor, the painted tree would become wet again and dilute colors. Subsequent washes could be applied right above dry acrylic, with zero bleeding concerns. This means you could work on the trees first, and transparent sky colors could be applied later.

Trees are not easy to paint. A beautiful sky painted in watercolor can be easily ruined if the trees that get painted subsequently are not done right. When the trees are perfected first, ruining a painting is less likely. The non-rehydrating dry paint lets you switch back and forth, make adjustments, or tweak the trees and the background without “mudding” things. 

If you like to work with watercolor but don’t want anything to do with its drawbacks, consider diluting acrylic paint.

Can You Mix Acrylic and Watercolor? 

Yes, you can.

Making acrylic behave like watercolor is not the same as mixing the two. If you’d like to set up a color palette with multiple hues of watercolor and a white acrylic blob, you may do that.

However, to get the color to your exact preference, you may have to play with the proportions of acrylic and watercolor. Based on the quantity of each type of paint you use, you could achieve an array of different finishes and textures. For instance:

• A mere touch of acrylic with higher amounts of watercolor would get you a “fortified watercolor” appearance – more opaque and solid than standard watercolor, but keeping watercolor’s natural color and tone.
• A lot of acrylic with little watercolor would make for a subtle appearance. However, you’ll obtain significantly more delicate tones compared to using just acrylic. The output will be more “painterly” acrylic.

Keep experimenting with the watercolor-acrylic mix and also check how it looks on paper. There could be variations in appearance between the palette and canvas.

If you are not sure of mixing the two paint types, that’s fine too. However, you should know that acrylic paint could be used on top of watercolor to conceal your painting gaffes.

Final Words

A camera is as good as the person shooting with it. Similarly, the best paint type is the one that best suits the skills and experience of a painter. For amateur painters, acrylic paint is certainly more suitable. But if you are painting outdoors, watercolor paint would be a lot more practical. The kind of look you’re aiming for also ascertains the paint type you should go with.

Watercolor usually lends to a somewhat clouded, more muted image. Though colorful, it has a slightly softer appearance. The subject could look a tad runny too. Acrylic paint would be devoid of all shortcomings of watercolor. As far as output goes, it would look somewhere between a watercolor and oil painting. 

Needless to say, the outcome significantly hinges on an artist’s painting style and techniques.

Sources 

• Raye of Light Studio: Watercolor vs. Acrylic
• Jerry’s Artarama: What Kind of Paint Should I Use
• The Benefits of Using Acrylic as Watercolor
• Art Passion Online: 12 Crucial Differences Between Acrylic and Watercolor Paint
• The Spruce Crafts: 16 Commonly Asked Questions by Painting Beginners
• Watercolor Affair: What is Watercolor Paint?