Why Oil Painting Portraits Will Never Lose Their Appeal

Oil paintings will probably never lose their appeal. They have survived each new innovation in terms of image reproductions, whether with new materials used for painting such as watercolours and acrylic, or the technological advances in photography.

An advantage of oil paintings over photography is that a good oil painting will capture the essence of something rather than being more of a moment in time.

An oil painting is created over a long period, which allows the artist to create something that symbolizes a person's nature as a whole. Because of it's more instant nature a photograph doesn't always manage to achieve this.

The actual skill in creating a painting is still appreciated, and this is often, unfairly, not the case of a good photograph. Because most people will be able to take reasonable photographs, especially with digital cameras, the perception is that photography is an easier skill to master than painting in oils. The fact that painting with oils is often viewed as the most difficult medium for a painter to work with only adds to its appeal and gives it greater appreciation.

Most people will display photographs somewhere, whether at home or in their office. Displaying an oil painting, especially when it is nicely framed will often be seen as something unique. In fact an oil painting portrait can now have a similar effect as the early photographic portraits must have done, and be seen as a break from the norm.

Whether you plan to get the perfect digital photo frames at Tesco, or use an ornate frame for an oil painting, frames also play an important part in making sure that an image is appreciated.

Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' is not just a representation of the young woman herself, but it tells us something about the young woman's nature through the portrait's reserved smile. This is what the best oil paintings should manage to achieve, as a straightforward copy of a person, animal or scene becomes more like a photographic snapshot. Even the great clarity of digital photos don't, by themselves, reveal much about a person's character for instance.

The work involved in creating an oil painting can be laborious as paint is applied in layers. Some will say that with the ability to take and store hundreds of digital photos quickly makes oil painting obsolete. But it's more difficult to reveal a person's character in a digital photograph compared to a painting in oils. As long as this remains the case then oil paintings will continue to be popular.