People often ask me why I paint in oils, aquarelle watercolors, gouache and acrylics. Why don’t I just pick one? The answer to that is that each medium offers certain advantages that for a particular painting make it the best medium to render my vision. For instance if I want the maximum in controlled wet in wet mixing there’s nothing better than oils. An example of where this excels is a human face with the colors are subtle and complex and shift from one to the other color with very smooth transitions in general. On the other hand if I want to layer many layers of color one over the other so they show through each other and do not intermix it’s hard to beat acrylics. The fast drying time means I’m able to layer many colors one over the other in a single day. On the other hand if I want to layer colors one over the other but with the possibility of intermixing them by scrubbing them together watercolors are the best medium. If I want the characteristics of watercolor but there are some opaque sections I want (or semi opaque sections) then gouache excels.  I select the medium I am going to work in after I decide on how I want the image to be rendered. I also find that working in different styles and methods I learn things that I would not necessarily have learned by working in one medium. I remember reading a book where John Singer Sargent referred to how getting out of the studio where he worked in oils  and doing a watercolor was refreshing and caused him to look at things a different way.