Why Is Oil Painting Difficult? The Real Challenges Behind the Medium

Oil painting looks easy in videos. Someone brushes pigment onto canvas, and suddenly there’s a glowing sunset or a lifelike portrait. But if you’ve ever tried it yourself, you know the truth: oil painting is hard. Not because you lack talent, but because the medium fights back. It’s slow, unforgiving, and full of hidden traps that trip up even experienced artists.

The Drying Time That Drags On

Oil paint doesn’t dry like watercolor or acrylic. It cures. That means it can take days-sometimes weeks-to touch dry, and months to fully harden. A thin layer might feel dry after 24 hours, but if you paint over it too soon, the layer underneath stays soft. That’s when you get cracking, lifting, or muddy colors. One painter spent three weeks on a portrait, only to find the cheeks had sunk inward because the underpainting hadn’t cured. He didn’t know the paint underneath was still moving.

There’s no quick fix. You can’t speed it up with a hairdryer. You can’t layer thickly without risking wrinkles or peeling. You have to plan ahead. If you want to glaze a red dress over a green shirt, you need to wait. Not just until it’s dry to the touch, but until the oil has oxidized enough to hold the next layer. That’s patience you can’t buy.

Blending Is a Balancing Act

Oil paint blends beautifully. That’s why artists love it. But that same quality makes it easy to ruin a painting. Blend too long, and the edges disappear. Blend too fast, and you lose control. A face might start as a clear transition from shadow to light, but if you overwork it with a soft brush, the features turn into a smear. The cheeks become mushy. The nose loses its structure.

There’s no single right way to blend. Some artists use a dry brush to soften edges. Others use a clean brush with a tiny bit of medium. Some paint wet-on-wet for hours. But if you don’t know your limits, you’ll end up with a painting that looks alive in places and dead in others. One student spent 12 hours on a single hand, blending until the fingers looked like sausages. The problem wasn’t skill-it was not knowing when to stop.

Color Mixing Is a Minefield

Oil paints don’t mix like crayons. Each pigment has its own behavior. Titanium white is opaque and heavy. Cobalt blue is transparent and slow to dry. Burnt sienna can darken a whole area if you use too much. Mix a green from cadmium yellow and phthalo blue, and it might look perfect on the palette-but turn gray on the canvas because the blue is overpowering.

And then there’s the issue of color shift. Oil paint dries darker. A bright yellow you mixed might look cheerful on the palette, but dry to a dull ochre. You learn this the hard way: you paint a sunlit wall, step back, and realize it looks like a dirty wall. You add more white. Then more. By the time you’re done, the wall looks like chalk. You didn’t make a mistake-you just didn’t account for how oil changes over time.

Brushes and Tools Don’t Play Nice

Oil paint is sticky. It clings to brushes. If you don’t clean them right after use, the bristles stiffen and snap. Even with proper cleaning, brushes wear out faster than with watercolor. A good sable brush might last six months with acrylics. With oil? Three, if you’re lucky.

And the mediums? Linseed oil, turpentine, stand oil-they’re not optional. They change how paint flows, dries, and shines. Use too much linseed, and your painting yellows over time. Use too much turpentine, and the paint becomes brittle. You can’t just grab any brush and start painting. You need a system: one brush for underpainting, another for glazing, a third for detail. And you have to clean them properly, or you’ll ruin them. One artist threw away $200 worth of brushes because she didn’t know turpentine needs to be rinsed with soap, not just wiped off.

Painting Over Mistakes Is a Trap

Acrylic lets you paint over a mistake in minutes. Oil doesn’t. If you mess up a tree in a landscape, you can’t just cover it with white. The underlying layer will show through, especially if it’s thick. You have to scrape it off, sand it, prime it, and repaint. That’s hours of work gone. And even then, the texture might still be off.

Some artists use the “fat over lean” rule to avoid cracking: each layer should have more oil than the one below. But if you paint a thick, oily layer over a thin, lean one, you get cracking. If you do it the other way, the top layer might not stick. It’s not just about color-it’s chemistry. And if you ignore it, your painting could split open years later.

The Cost of Getting It Right

Oil painting isn’t cheap. A single tube of cadmium red can cost $15. A set of good brushes? $100. A decent canvas? $20 each. And you’ll go through them fast. You’ll ruin canvases. You’ll mix colors that turn brown. You’ll paint something you love, only to realize the light is wrong and you have to start over.

There’s no shortcut. You can’t buy a kit and become good in a weekend. You need space-oil fumes aren’t safe in a small apartment. You need time-hours alone with a canvas, waiting. You need patience-weeks of work for one painting. And you need to accept that you’ll make mistakes. Lots of them.

Why People Still Do It

Despite all this, oil painting endures. Why? Because nothing else gives you the same depth. The way light moves through layers of glaze. The richness of a shadow that’s not just dark, but full of color. The way a brushstroke can hold emotion-thick, slow, deliberate.

Van Gogh didn’t paint in oil because it was easy. He painted in oil because it let him feel the paint. He built his skies with thick strokes that still ripple today. Rembrandt used glazes to make skin glow like candlelight. These weren’t lucky accidents. They were the result of years of wrestling with a medium that refused to behave.

Oil painting is hard because it demands more than skill. It asks for discipline, humility, and persistence. You don’t master it-you learn to work with it. And when you finally get it right, when the light falls just right on a cheek, when the colors breathe, when the paint feels alive-it’s worth every hour you wasted, every brush you ruined, every canvas you threw away.