Painting isn't really painting when you don't know what materials to use for your artwork in the first place. The best paintings are brought to life when the artist uses paints that work well and that brings out the effect that he or she wants to emit in the painting. Nowadays painters are deciding which would be the best paint to use based on the safety and the quality of the painting material. They usually have two choices: they could either use acrylic paint or oil paint. The features of each make big differences on the output and have its own advantages and disadvantages, which puts it in a debate in the art and painting community.

Oil paint and acrylic paint have various characteristics and benefits that make it difficult to choose which one would be best for painting. Oil painting is basically one of the oldest mediums for paintings, dating back as early as the 13th century England. Its use was not actually for artistic purposes but for interior decoration. It has been used by famous traditional painters for centuries onwards and is still being used by modern painters in today's society. The only disadvantage is that it is slow in drying since it consists of small particles mixed in linseed oil, wax stabilizer, thinner and a drying agent all in one. So if you are an artist who believes in the traditional use of oil paintings, be prepared to wait for months for your painting to be ready for placement in the frame. Depending on the amount of oil that you use for either a landscape or a portrait, the oil may take a long time to dry. What you can expect though from this tedious process is a painting that has been seriously worked on with much emphasis on detail and texture to make it the best that it can be.

Artists who want to get their paintings done faster than oils, on the other hand, are instead using acrylic paint. This type of paint has been used commercially since the 1950s and is a fast-drying medium, which consists of pigment mixed with acrylic resin plus mineral spirits. What's fun about acrylic paint is that you can dilute it in water and it is water resistant when dried and put into canvass. If you are a really skilled artist, with careful mixture and measurement of the amount of paint to be used, your painting could actually resemble water color or oil paintings as well. Though it doesn't take much effort to make and wait for a painting to dry, the quality of the work will have to depend on how well you use and mix your paints to come up with something exquisite. If you use acrylic just to get your paintings to finish on time for an art show or exhibit in two weeks' time, then most likely they won't have the same texture and deep essence that an oil painting, done with patience and sheer hard work, has.