Oil Over Acrylic

Storm over the Lagoon, oil over acrylic, 24x36 in.

Why not just paint in oil  OVER your acrylic plein air work?
Don’t thin the oil, use it straight.

I like painting on location in acrylic, then painting over it to make changes in the studio.
It's a great system.

Use a coat of glossy acrylic varnish over the acrylic painting before using oil on it.

You should never paint acrylic over oil, right? — only oil over acrylic!

I used to use oil over acrylic for a couple of reasons:

1. It dries slowly, so once you finish working on location, bring the painting into the studio, let it dry a couple of days and put a coat of acrylic varnish on it. Dry at least two more days before starting in oil.

THEN you  can paint adjustments or refinements in oil and if you don’t like what you’ve done you can wipe it off (even use thinner) and still have your original statement underneath.
If you try making adjustments in acrylic it’s usually dry by the time you step back and get a good look. Then it’s too late to remove.

2. With oil, maybe because it’s glossy, you can get darker darks (and of course thicker and more impasto lights).
This will give your painting qualities you might be missing in acrylic.

I quit doing this because I didn’t know enough to use acrylic varnish (gloss) as the cover coat for the acrylic painting.
This was in the 90s.
Instead I covered the whole acrylic with a quick-drying medium for oil called Liquin.
Whether this is even archival, I seriously doubt.
But the worst of it was that I used it over even large paintings, and all the time I was breathing this stuff right in my enclosed studio.
After a series of really bad headaches I finally figured out you need to use Liquin only outdoors, and in small amounts.

About that time I moved out of that studio/house and had a whole new setup. I’ve never had time to keep up both the acrylic and the oil palettes after that, but I think it’s a good way to go because slow-drying acrylics are unreliable, impossible to trust.

Oil is more forgiving for studio changes and gives time for deliberation.

Ruffled Water, oil over acrylic, 48x42 in.