Oil painting has a reputation for being intimidating, and a lot of that reputation comes down to how people start. Buying a full set of large tubes before you’ve even worked out which colours you actually use, or which techniques you enjoy, tends to lead to a drawer full of half used paint and a slightly deflated sense that oils weren’t for you after all. Starting smaller solves most of that problem before it begins.
Why Tube Size Matters When Starting Out
This is why Art Spectrum 40ml oil paints are a sensible starting point for anyone trying oils for the first time. A smaller tube size means less money committed before you know what you’re doing, and less pressure to use up an expensive large tube before it dries out or degrades in storage. It also encourages a bit more restraint with mixing, since a smaller amount of paint naturally discourages the kind of wasteful overmixing that’s common when beginners have a large tube’s worth of paint to work through. Once you’ve spent time with a smaller set and worked out which colours you reach for most, moving to larger tubes for your go-to shades becomes a far more informed decision than guessing upfront.
What’s Different About Working With Oils
If you’re coming from acrylics, oil paint behaves quite differently, and it’s worth understanding those differences before your first session. The most obvious change is drying time. Where acrylics dry within minutes, oils can stay workable for hours or even days, depending on the paint and conditions. This isn’t a downside, it’s actually one of the medium’s biggest advantages, since it allows far more time to blend, adjust, and rework an area without the paint setting before you’re happy with it. Cleanup also looks different. Instead of rinsing brushes with water, oils typically require a solvent or a paint conditioning medium, along with proper brush cleaning products designed for oil paint specifically.
Building a Starter Palette
The same logic that applies to starting small with acrylics applies here, just with a bit more attention to how oil colours behave together. A basic starter palette of a few core colours, a red, blue, yellow, white, and black, gives enough range to mix a wide variety of tones while keeping the initial investment manageable. Because oils dry slowly, there’s less pressure to work quickly between colours, which actually makes early palette experimentation more forgiving than it can feel with faster drying mediums.
Basic Setup for Oil Painting
A few pieces of equipment are worth having on hand before your first session. A palette, ideally one suited to oils since some materials can be affected by solvents, gives you space to mix. Brushes designed for oil painting tend to hold up better to solvent cleaning than brushes intended for other mediums, so it’s worth using brushes suited to the job. A canvas or painting board prepared for oils, and a jar or container for any solvent or medium you’re using, round out the basics. If you’re working with solvents, proper ventilation matters. Working in a well aired space, or opting for low odour or water mixable oil options if solvent fumes are a concern, is a sensible precaution worth taking seriously from the start.
Working With Slower Drying Times
The extended drying time of oil paint changes how you approach a painting session in a genuinely useful way. Wet-on-wet techniques, where fresh paint is blended directly into paint that’s still wet on the canvas, become far more practical with oils, since you’re not racing against the clock the way you would be with a fast drying medium. At the same time, if you want distinct, clean layers, allowing a section to dry before painting over it becomes a deliberate choice rather than a race against time. This flexibility, choosing to blend while wet or wait for a layer to set, gives beginners more room to experiment and correct mistakes without the pressure that comes with faster drying paints.
A Starter Checklist for Your First Oil Painting Session
Before diving in, it helps to have the basics sorted. A small set of core colours in a manageable tube size, a couple of oil suited brushes, a palette, a prepared canvas or board, and whatever solvent or medium you plan to use, along with good ventilation, covers what’s needed to get started properly. From there, the best first step is simply spending time mixing colours and getting a feel for how the paint moves and blends, without any pressure to finish a complete piece in that first sitting.
Starting with a smaller, more manageable set of oils takes a lot of the intimidation out of trying the medium for the first time, and it gives you the freedom to learn at your own pace before deciding where your practice goes from there.