Most numbered kits are acrylic, including ours, but oil versions exist and the two behave differently enough that it is worth understanding before you buy.
What they actually are
Oil paint is pigment ground into a drying oil, usually linseed. It does not mix with water, so thinning and cleaning traditionally need mineral spirits or turpentine, neither of which comes in a kit. European painters have used it since at least the twelfth century, and oil-based paint has been found in wall paintings considerably older than that.
Acrylic paint is pigment suspended in an acrylic polymer emulsion. It thins and cleans with water. It is much newer: the first artists' acrylics appeared in the late 1940s, and the water-based versions everyone now uses arrived in the mid 1950s.
One correction worth making, because you will see it stated the other way round: oil does not dry by evaporation. It cures by reacting with oxygen in the air, which is why the process takes days rather than minutes, and why heating it does not help.
Drying time
The difference that shapes everything else.
Acrylic is touch-dry in minutes. On a numbered canvas that is a real advantage: paint a wrong color, wait, and put the right one straight over it. Nothing underneath comes back, because each cured layer is sealed.
The one caveat is coverage rather than blending. A light color over a dark one may need a second coat before the old color stops showing. That is normal and expected, particularly with yellows, creams and whites.
Oil stays workable for days. If you like to work slowly across several sittings, softening an edge you laid down last night, that is a genuine pleasure. The cost is that a canvas can take weeks before it is safe to move, and neighboring regions stay wet long enough to run into each other if you are not careful about the order you work in.
Do not try to speed oil up with a hairdryer. Warm air does very little to a reaction that depends on oxygen, and it can skin the surface while the paint underneath is still soft, which causes wrinkling. If you want oil to dry faster, an alkyd medium is the proper tool.
Brushes
Kits come with brushes, so this only matters if you are replacing them.
For acrylic, use synthetic. Natural hair absorbs water, swells and goes limp, losing the spring that lets it hold a point. Synthetic filaments do not, so they keep their shape through a long session.
For oil, natural hog bristle is the classic choice, and note that hog bristle is stiff, not soft. That stiffness is the point: it moves thick paint and leaves a mark. Soft natural hair, sable and its substitutes, is for smooth blending and fine detail rather than for pushing paint around.
With either, the rules are the same: never leave a brush standing in the water or solvent jar, and clean it before the paint sets. Acrylic that cures in the base of the bristles never comes out. Our brush guide covers the rest.
Fading and yellowing
This is where most comparisons go wrong, so it is worth being precise.
Fading is a property of the pigment, not the binder. The same pigment will fade at much the same rate whether it is bound in oil or in acrylic. It is not true that acrylics as a category are lightfast and oils are not. What matters is the lightfastness rating printed on the tube, usually an ASTM grade where I is excellent and II is very good.
Yellowing is a property of the oil, and it is a separate thing from fading. Linseed oil yellows over time, and the counterintuitive part is that it yellows in the dark and partially bleaches back when the painting is returned to daylight. So an oil painting stored in a closet is doing worse than one hanging on a wall out of direct sun.
Acrylic does not yellow in that way. It has its own quirk instead: the film stays slightly soft, so it attracts dust, and two acrylic canvases stored face to face can stick together.
Neither of these is a reason to avoid either paint. Keep any painting out of direct sunlight and both will outlast you.
Color shift
Acrylic dries slightly darker than it looks wet, because the binder is milky in the pot and clear once cured. Oil does not do this to the same degree.
On a numbered canvas it rarely matters, since you are not matching a mix you made yourself. It matters a great deal once you start mixing your own colors.
Your room
The practical deciding factor for most people.
Oil traditionally needs solvents, and solvent fumes in a small unventilated room are genuinely unpleasant and worth taking seriously. Rags soaked in oil also need care, since they can generate heat as the oil cures.
Acrylic has none of this. You can work at the kitchen table for four hours with the windows shut.
If you like oil but not the fumes, water-mixable oils are worth knowing about. They are real oil paints modified to thin and clean with water, and they handle much like conventional oils.
Mediums
Both have them, and on a numbered canvas neither is necessary.
For oil, an alkyd medium speeds drying, and extra oil slows it and makes the film glossier and more flexible. The one rule worth knowing is fat over lean: each layer should contain slightly more oil than the one beneath it, or the surface cracks as it cures.
For acrylic, a retarder slows drying so you have longer to blend, and a flow improver thins the paint without weakening the film the way plain water does. Neither is needed for a kit, and both are easy to overdo.
Storage
Close every pot the moment you finish with it. That is most of it.
Do not put acrylic in the fridge or the freezer. This advice circulates widely and it is wrong. Acrylic is a polymer emulsion, and freezing can make the polymer coagulate irreversibly, leaving you with a pot of grainy sludge that no amount of stirring will recover. Room temperature, out of direct sun, lid on.
Oil paint in a tube keeps for years without any special handling.
Which to choose
Choose acrylic if the design has small, tightly packed regions, since being able to correct an overrun in twenty minutes matters more the more edges there are. Also if you are painting somewhere without much ventilation, if you want to finish in a reasonable time, or if you would rather not own solvents.
Choose oil if you enjoy working slowly over weeks, you want to soften edges rather than accept the printed ones, you have a well-ventilated space, and you are not in a hurry.
The often-repeated line that oil is for experienced painters and acrylic is for beginners is too neat. Oil is more demanding about ventilation, patience and layering; it is not harder to put on a canvas. Choose by how you like to work.
What we make
Ours are acrylic, for the reasons above: no solvents, fast correction, and a canvas that can be finished over a few weeks at a kitchen table. The paints arrive vacuum-sealed so they are moist when you open them, the canvas ships rolled in a tube rather than folded, and there is an 11 by 17 reference print so you are not leaning over the work to check a section.
The range is in our collection, every design has a matched extra paint set if a color runs low, and we can turn one of your own photographs into a numbered canvas. If this is your first, start with the beginner guide.
