How long does paint on a canvas take to dry i am a new painter and have painted on canvas with oil and acrylic?

it has been two weeks since finishing painting this canvas i used oil and acrylic( is this ok to do) some of the paint has not dried yet is this normal.when painting figures do you paint the background colour first and then the figures on top.thank you for any advice.How long does paint on a canvas take to dry i am a new painter and have painted on canvas with oil and acrylic?
sounds perfectly normal... I work quite often in mixed media, and often use oils %26amp; acrylics..





acrylics tend to dry really quickly, where as oils can sometimes take a number of weeks to dry.. obviously the thicker the oil has been applied the longer it will take to dry..





you can buy quick drying mediums to mix with the oil paint from art shops..but experiment beforehand, as some mediums can change the overall affect of the paint..





There's no real right way of painting...but I personally tend to get the background in first before working on the foreground... so you do what ever you feel is right for the painting :)How long does paint on a canvas take to dry i am a new painter and have painted on canvas with oil and acrylic?
Oil paint takes up to six years to dry properly, you need to mix it with turpentine and linseed oil (or another medium) to make it dry faster.





Acrylic dries within hours.





As a painter myself, I would not have mixed these mediums, because they don't really work well together. Some people will do a layer of acrylic undernearth oil, leaving the acrylic to dry first before applying the oil, but I don't like mixing them at all.
Oil paint can take years to properly dry whereas acrylic usually takes hours.
Oil paints can take up to 6 months to dry in the UK especially the yellows,it may feel touch dry after a week or two but it has to set,applied very thinly will cut down drying times,,the darker shades will drt a lot quicker,and it `s fine to mix your mediums,
it depends on how thick you apply it. if your applying it impasto style quite thickly. then it can take literally years to dry. you can speed this up though by adding structura, i have managed to get oil paint almost 1/4 of an inch thick dry in two days using this method. though there is a knack to it. too much structura and it will crack quite badly.





also if your painting thinly with a brush, use white spirit to thin the paint, as this evaporates quickly your painting will dry much quicker, if you use linseed oil. it will stay wet for a very long time.





I have used linseed oil on pencil and charcoal drawings on paper. which is still wet 10 years on.
Hi Ron


ANYthing goes in the world of creativity, so of course it's okay to mix your media :)


Ron I always paint from back to front, meaning that I paint whatever's farthest away first, then work forward. (For example, I just completed an acrylic of an old bridge over a creek where I work. I started with sky, then did the woods, then creek, then bridge, then grassy foreground.) It's perfectly okay to make a sketch on your canvas first, in fact I often first make a sketch on paper of the subject I will be painting, to get a ';feel'; for it. You can go around your figures somewhat, even though you might have some overlap...but trying to do your background around your figures completely would create unnecessary difficulty.


And yes, it can several weeks for oils to dry, but eventually it will...have patience :)
The Acrylic in the paint is slowing the drying time of the oil paint, it's happened to me before - I no longer mix - it will take quite a while - oil does anyway, I just cover it, put it somewhere dry - like the airing cupboard, and go onto the next.


It doesn't matter with oils whether you do the background first or not, as the medium is strong enough to cover itself, in water colour a lighter colour will generally go on first.