When choosing a type of paint to use as you begin to find your niche as an artist, it is important to keep in mind what type of paintings you wish to produce and how much you want to spend.
Different paints will yield different styles of paintings and each one offers different advantages and disadvantages. Acrylic, oil, and watercolor paints are the three main types that most artists use and here is a breakdown of their strengths, weaknesses, and other quirks.
Watercolor paint is the least expensive of the three at most art stores but requires some special talent and lots of practice to use effectively. The use of water is key with these paints as the name would suggest because artists need to know how much to use in each situation. The main difficulty that use watercolor presents is the fact that it's much more difficult to cover up a mistake in watercolor. In order to do that you need to let it dry for a long time first. On top of that, it's easy to make mistakes because one errant drop of water can ruin a bunch of details that took a very long time to paint.
The advantage to watercolor in terms of ease of use is that it's easy to paint large areas, especially if you're painting something light like the sky or the water and don't need it to be completely filled in with paint. Watercolor is easy to use once you get the hang of it but it is a little difficult to get in the groove of using it properly.
Oil painting on the other hand is usually the most expensive of the three paints. It allows for the best demonstration of detail as well as light/dark contrast in your paintings because it is a very rich type of paint. This kind of paint also stands the test of time very well and will stay solid through the passing of time better than the other two types of paint.
Another downside to oil paint is that it is necessary to use turpentine or the turpentine substitute Turpenoid in order to clean your brushes off. This substance produces fumes that are not pleasant and not necessarily safe so you have to be careful with it. It is also very flammable especially when combined with oil paint. In addition, oil paint will stain your clothes easily as well as other surfaces potentially so you need to wear raggedy clothing when you use it and put down a lot of newspaper to keep your area as clean as possible.
But if you want permanence and detail, oil painting is definitely the way to go.
Finally, acrylic painting is almost like an attempt to find a happy medium between the two. Acrylic paint provides a solid compromise between detail and ease of use so it might be the best one to experiment with for novices.
Overall, these different paints each bring something different to the table. They can even be combined to create different looks in each of your paintings. To find out which one suits you best, however, take a painting class with each type of paint to get a feel for which one you like best if you get the chance and then make your decision on the one that feels best.
