A modern oil painting does not need a crowded scene or a complicated story to hold a wall. It needs one strong shape, a flat sky or a flat sea, and a crop so close or so wide that the eye has nowhere else to go. That is the whole idea behind this list: swimmers seen from above, a woman crossing a plaza in a yellow coat, a single tulip on teal, a chair sitting alone in a sunny room.
Every idea below fits on a small canvas and a short painting session, because the point is a few confident color blocks, not fussy detail. Scroll through all 28, pick the one that matches the mood of your room, and start mixing your flat color fields today.
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Start with the swimmer, because a bird’s eye pool view is the easiest way into this whole modern style: one flat turquoise rectangle, one small figure, done. Block the pool in with a palette knife loaded with teal and a touch of white, pulling the color in long flat strokes so the surface stays smooth and even.
Once the water is in, drop the swimmer as a few simple shapes: a dark oval head, tan shoulders, pale limbs breaking the surface. Keep the water ripples as a handful of curved knife marks around the body rather than a full pattern, or the pool reads busy instead of calm.
Measure the figure against the canvas width first: a swimmer placed off center, about a third of the way in, feels far more like a photograph than one placed dead center. If pure turquoise feels too much, mix in a little sage to cool it down.
Let the water dry a touch before adding the figure so the colors stay crisp instead of muddying together.
Palette: Phthalo Turquoise,Titanium White,Raw Umber,Sage Green
Move from water to architecture with a pink building corner set against a flat blue sky, one of the simplest geometry exercises in this whole list. Paint the sky first in one smooth pass of pale blue, then bring the corner of the building in as two flat planes meeting at a diagonal line.
Use a slightly warmer pink on the sunlit side and a cooler, grayer pink on the shadow side so the corner reads as three dimensional without any extra detail. A ruler or the edge of a palette knife keeps that center line crisp, which matters more here than almost anywhere else in the painting.
If the two pinks look too similar once dry, this is the spot that usually goes wrong: push the shadow side darker and cooler until the corner clearly turns. No pink in your set works too, since white mixed with a touch of red oxide and a little blue gets you there.
Leave most of the sky untouched and empty, that flat space is doing half the work.
Palette: Powder Pink,Dusty Rose,Sky Blue,Titanium White
Give the plaza a human moment with a woman in a yellow coat crossing it alone, the kind of lone figure this whole modern style leans on. Paint the plaza ground first in a flat warm gray or pale terracotta, kept simple and shadowless so the figure has somewhere quiet to stand.
Block her coat in as one bold yellow shape, legs as two narrow dark strokes, head as a small oval, and resist adding a face. From a distance a figure this small reads as a person through silhouette and color alone, and any detail at this scale usually just looks smudged.
Eye level sits high here, looking down slightly at the plaza, which is what makes the ground feel vast and the woman feel small inside it. Keep her off to one side rather than centered so the empty space around her does the talking.
If yellow ochre runs out, cadmium yellow mixed with a touch of white gets a close match.
Palette: Cadmium Yellow,Warm Gray,Raw Umber,Titanium White
Zoom all the way in next with a close crop of a hand holding a single orange lily, since this list works best when it mixes wide scenes with tight ones like this. Sketch the hand loosely first in thin paint, keeping the fingers as simple rounded shapes rather than individual knuckles and creases.
Paint the lily in bold orange petals, each one a confident single stroke from base to tip, then let the background sit as one flat pale color behind everything. Hands are the part that usually goes wrong, so keep the proportions in check by comparing the length of the hand to the length of the flower stem before committing to paint.
Working on a small canvas here only helps, since the crop is already tight and there is nowhere for the eye to wander. A soft rag can lift a petal edge that spreads too far while the paint is still wet.
If orange lilies are not available for reference, any orange or coral flower photo gives you the same petal shapes to work from.
Palette: Cadmium Orange,Sap Green,Titanium White,Raw Umber
Keep the pool theme going with a pool ladder casting a long shadow across the water, a quiet composition built almost entirely from light and angle. Paint the water as one flat turquoise field first, then bring in the white ladder as two clean vertical lines with simple curved handles at the top.
The shadow is the whole point of this piece, so decide on your light source before you paint a single stroke: a low sun on one side throws a long dark diagonal across the water, while a high sun gives a short, tight shadow close to the ladder’s base. Painting the shadow a shade darker and cooler than the surrounding water, never black, keeps it looking like it belongs to the water rather than sitting on top of it.
If the white ladder disappears into the canvas, outline its edges with a thin line of pale gray once the white is dry. A ruler keeps the ladder rails perfectly straight if a steady hand is not available today.
Palette: Phthalo Turquoise,Titanium White,Payne’s Gray,Cerulean Blue
Try painting the same ladder twice, once with a long low-sun shadow and once with a short midday one, to see how much mood a single light angle changes.
Flatten the view even further with a striped beach umbrella seen from directly above on pale sand, a subject that is really just a circle and some stripes. Block the sand in first as one warm pale field, then paint the umbrella as a clean circle using a plate or a lid to trace the outline before filling it in with alternating stripes.
Keep the stripes a manageable width, four to six across the circle reads as bold and modern, while a dozen thin ones starts to look fussy on a small canvas. A straight edge or masking tape pressed onto the dry sand layer keeps each stripe crisp when the umbrella colors go on over it.
This is one of the quickest pieces on the list: ten minutes gets the circle and stripes blocked in flat, while forty minutes allows a soft shadow pooling at the umbrella’s base and a little texture dragged through the sand with a dry brush.
No circular object to trace nearby, a bowl or even a large coin works for the smaller inner details.
You Will Need
- a plate or lid to trace the circle
Palette: Terracotta,Titanium White,Sand Beige,Sage Green
Strip a landscape right down to its basics with an abstract piece made of three wide color bands, sky, middle distance and ground, nothing else. Mix each color ahead of time in a generous amount, since matching a color mid-painting after it runs out is the fastest way to end up with a visible seam between two shades that should be one flat field.
Lay the bands in with a wide flat brush or a palette knife, pulling each one in a single confident horizontal pass rather than going back over it repeatedly. The boundary line between bands is where this painting lives or dies: keep it straight and deliberate with a strip of tape, or let it stay loose and slightly uneven for a softer handmade feel.
Try this one first in a quick ten minute version with just three flat colors, then come back another day and vary the band widths, making the sky band twice as tall as the ground band, to see how differently the same three colors can feel.
You Will Need
- painter’s tape for a crisp horizon line
Palette: Powder Pink,Terracotta,Sage Green,Titanium White
Bring back the aerial view with a tennis court seen from above with one player standing near the baseline, echoing the swimming pool piece earlier but in crisp terracotta instead of water. Paint the court first as a flat terracotta rectangle, then add the white court lines with a thin brush or a liner, measuring the spacing against the court’s width so the lines stay evenly placed rather than drifting.
The net is just one straight line with a slightly thicker strip along its top edge, easiest to lay in with a ruler before the court color is fully dry so it sits slightly soft rather than razor sharp. Drop the player in last as a small simple figure, white shirt, dark shorts, racket as a short diagonal stroke, placed well off to one side.
If the white lines bleed into the wet terracotta, that is the usual trouble spot: let the base color dry fully first, or use a palette knife to apply the lines in thicker, more controlled strokes.
You Will Need
- a ruler for the court lines
Palette: Terracotta,Titanium White,Payne’s Gray,Sap Green
Settle into something quieter with a terracotta vase sitting in front of a sage green arch shape, a still life that leans entirely on geometry instead of detail. Paint the arch first as one flat sage shape filling most of the background, using a curved piece of cardboard as a guide if a freehand curve feels risky.
Once the arch is dry, block the vase in as a simple rounded silhouette in warm terracotta, keeping the highlight as a single pale stroke down one side rather than a cluster of small marks. This pairing works well alongside other calm still life setups if you want more practice, and a look through still life oil painting ideas for beginners turns up plenty of companion pieces.
The spot that usually goes wrong is the vase sinking into the arch because the two colors are too close in value. Push the terracotta noticeably darker or lighter than the sage so the shapes stay distinct from across the room.
Palette: Terracotta,Sage Green,Titanium White,Raw Umber
Scale right back up again with a figure in a red dress standing alone on a vast salt flat, one of the boldest color contrasts in this whole list. Paint the salt flat first as a huge flat pale field, almost white with just a whisper of pink or blue mixed in, stretching nearly to the top of the canvas before a thin strip of sky.
Against that enormous pale field, the red dress becomes the entire painting, so block it in as one saturated, confident shape with no shading beyond a single darker stroke where the fabric folds. Eye level sits low and far out here, which is what makes the flat ground stretch on seemingly forever behind the tiny figure.
Resist the urge to add texture to the salt flat, since the flatness itself is the point. If that much empty space feels uncomfortable to paint, start with a smaller test canvas first to get used to leaving so much of it bare.
Palette: Cadmium Red,Titanium White,Powder Pink,Sky Blue
Trade the open ground for a wall with palm shadows falling across a pastel stucco surface, a piece that is really an exercise in light and pattern rather than any single object. Paint the stucco wall first as one flat warm pink or pale yellow field, keeping the surface smooth and even with a wide flat brush.
Once dry, mix a cool gray green shadow tone and paint the palm fronds as a cluster of long tapering leaf shapes radiating from one point near the top of the canvas, angled to follow wherever the light is coming from. A fan brush dragged lightly through each frond shadow, barely loaded with paint, gives the leaf edges a slightly broken, sun-bleached quality that a solid flat shape never quite manages.
If the shadow shapes look too stiff and symmetrical, nudge a few fronds to different lengths and angles, since real palm shadows are never perfectly even.
You Will Need
- a fan brush for the frond edges
Palette: Powder Pink,Payne’s Gray,Sage Green,Titanium White
Keep the pattern energy going with an outdoor staircase where each step is painted a different color, a subject that turns basic geometry into something playful. Sketch the staircase shape first in thin paint, working out how many steps fit comfortably on the canvas before committing, five or six wide flat steps read far better at this size than a dozen narrow ones.
Paint each step riser as its own flat color block, moving across the palette rather than repeating any shade twice in a row so the sequence feels deliberate. Measuring each step against the one before it as you go keeps the perspective honest, since steps that shrink too quickly or too slowly toward the top make the whole staircase look like it is tipping over.
A straight edge keeps each step line clean, which matters more here than almost any other piece in this list. Swap in pastel versions of any color you are missing, since the exact hues matter less than the fact that no two steps repeat.
You Will Need
- a ruler or straight edge for the step lines
Palette: Terracotta,Sage Green,Powder Pink,Cerulean Blue
Bring a lone figure indoors with a man sitting on a bench in a huge white gallery, a composition that depends on scale rather than detail to make its point. Paint the gallery walls and floor first as two large flat near-white fields, one slightly warmer and one slightly cooler so the room still reads as three dimensional without any visible lines.
Drop the bench in as a simple dark rectangle, then the seated figure as a few economical shapes, rounded shoulders, bent knees, hands resting in the lap. Keeping the figure small against all that white space is the whole trick: measure his height against the wall behind him and make sure he takes up no more than a fifth of the canvas height.
The usual mistake here is making the gallery walls too textured or too detailed, which fights with the figure instead of framing him. Leave them nearly bare, with maybe one faint horizontal line suggesting where wall meets floor.
Palette: Titanium White,Warm Gray,Raw Umber,Payne’s Gray
Move in tight again with a cropped face wearing sunglasses that reflect the sea, a piece built almost entirely on one small detail doing a lot of work. Block in the skin tone broadly first across the whole crop, then paint the sunglasses as two dark rounded shapes sitting slightly forward of the face plane.
Inside each lens, paint a tiny flat scene, a sliver of blue sea meeting a paler sky, using the smallest brush in your kit since this reflection is the entire reason the painting exists. The light source matters here more than almost anywhere else on this list: a sun coming from above and slightly to one side throws a soft highlight along the top rim of the glasses and a warm glow across one cheek, which is what sells the beach setting without ever painting a single wave outside the lenses.
If the reflection looks too detailed and fussy, simplify it down to just two flat color shapes, sea and sky, nothing more.
Palette: Payne’s Gray,Cerulean Blue,Terracotta,Titanium White
Pull back out to a whole room with a single chair sitting alone in a patch of sun, a quiet interior that works entirely through light and empty space. Paint the walls and floor as two broad flat fields first, warm where the sun hits and cooler in the shadowed corners, blending the transition softly with a dry brush rather than a hard line.
Place the chair as a simple geometric silhouette, a few straight lines for the legs and back, one flat color for the seat, positioned off to one side so the sun patch on the floor becomes the real subject of the painting. Painting that sun patch as a soft-edged pale shape, slightly warmer than the surrounding floor, is what makes the room feel genuinely lit rather than just painted two colors.
If the room starts to feel flat and lifeless, add one small cast shadow stretching from the chair’s legs across the floor, angled to match wherever the light is coming from.
Palette: Sand Beige,Terracotta,Titanium White,Warm Gray
Combine architecture and water with a flat-roofed modern house standing beside a pool, a composition that lets geometry and color do almost all of the work. Paint the sky as one flat pale field first, then bring in the house as a simple box shape, flat roofline, a few rectangular windows, one solid color block for the whole facade.
Once the house is blocked in, add the pool as a flat turquoise shape in the foreground, keeping its edge perfectly straight against the terrace with a ruler or a piece of tape. Checking the house’s height against the width of the pool before painting either one keeps the proportions believable, since a house that is too tall or too short next to its own pool is the single most common thing that throws this composition off.
Keep windows as flat dark rectangles rather than painting any glass reflection, since that extra detail usually fights with the clean geometric feel the rest of the piece is going for.
You Will Need
- painter’s tape for the pool edge
Palette: Terracotta,Phthalo Turquoise,Titanium White,Sage Green
Step away from recognizable subjects entirely with a still life of pastel cubes and spheres arranged in soft side light, a piece built purely on geometry and shading. Block each shape in flat first, cube faces as separate flat planes, spheres as plain circles, before adding any shading at all, so the underlying geometry stays honest from the start.
Light from one side is the whole point of this piece: it means every cube gets one bright face, one mid-tone face and one shadow face, while every sphere gets a soft gradient from light to dark with a small reflected glow at its darkest edge. Blending that sphere gradient with a dry, barely loaded brush in gentle circular motions avoids the harsh stripe that a fully loaded brush tends to leave.
If a cube’s edges look soft and uncertain, firm them up with a ruler once the base colors are dry, then re-blend just the shadow transitions by hand.
Palette: Powder Pink,Sage Green,Sand Beige,Titanium White
Setting up real blocks and balls on a windowsill for ten minutes of reference light is worth more here than any photo, since soft side light shifts constantly through the day.
Return to the pool one more time with a woman floating on an inflatable ring in deep blue water, a cheerful contrast to the earlier aerial swimmer piece. Paint the water first as a rich, nearly navy blue field, darker and more saturated than the turquoise pool used earlier in this list, which is what makes this feel like deep water rather than a shallow end.
Paint the inflatable ring as a bold circular shape in a contrasting bright color, using a round lid to guide the outline, then add the floating figure reclined across it in a few relaxed, simple shapes. Working quickly here for the ten minute version gets the flat shapes blocked in, while the forty minute version adds gentle ripples radiating out from the ring using a dry brush dragged lightly across the still-wet blue.
If the figure looks stiff, loosen the arms and head into softer, more casual curves rather than straight lines.
You Will Need
- a lid or bowl to trace the ring
Palette: Deep Ultramarine,Cadmium Orange,Titanium White,Terracotta
Open the canvas up to a long view with a desert road vanishing toward a line of pink mountains, a landscape built almost entirely on perspective. Paint the sky and mountains first as flat pale fields, keeping the mountains as simple overlapping triangular shapes rather than any detailed rock texture.
The road is where perspective takes over: start it wide at the bottom edge of the canvas and narrow it steadily as it climbs toward a single point roughly a third of the way up, since a road that narrows too slowly looks flat while one that narrows too fast looks like it drops off a cliff. A ruler laid from that vanishing point out to both bottom corners gives two straight guidelines to paint the road edges against.
If the desert ground between road and mountains feels empty, that emptiness is doing exactly what it should, resist filling it with extra rocks or scrub.
You Will Need
- a ruler for the road’s vanishing lines
Palette: Terracotta,Powder Pink,Sand Beige,Sky Blue
Zoom back into a single object with an oversized tulip filling almost the entire canvas against a plain teal background, a bold close crop that pairs well with the earlier hand and lily piece. Paint the teal background first in one smooth flat pass, covering every corner evenly so the tulip has a clean stage to sit on.
Once dry, block the tulip’s petals in as a few large confident shapes, cup first, then the two or three outer petals peeling slightly outward, each one painted in a single loaded stroke of the brush rather than built up slowly. For more close-up flower studies at this same confident scale, the ideas in oil painting flowers for total beginners make a good next stop.
If the petal edges look too soft and the tulip loses its shape against the teal, firm up just the outer silhouette with a thin dark line once everything else is dry, then leave the inner petal edges soft.
Palette: Phthalo Turquoise,Cadmium Red,Sap Green,Titanium White
Bring two figures into the picture with a pair sharing a bench on a long empty pier, adding a little company after so many solo subjects on this list. Paint the pier first as a long flat plank of pale wood stretching nearly the full width of the canvas, narrowing slightly toward the far end to suggest distance without a full perspective setup.
Place the bench and the two seated figures roughly two thirds of the way along the pier rather than at the very end, which leaves enough empty pier in the foreground to keep the scene feeling spacious. Keep both figures simple and slightly turned toward each other or toward the water, since even a small tilt of the heads reads instantly as two people sharing a quiet moment rather than two strangers who happen to sit nearby.
If the pier looks too narrow and cramped, widen it slightly at the near edge, a pier that fills most of the canvas width feels far more expansive than a thin strip.
Palette: Sand Beige,Cerulean Blue,Raw Umber,Titanium White
Narrow the view right down with a window frame cropping a small slice of sky and a rooftop beyond it, a composition built entirely on what gets left out. Paint the window frame first as a simple dark rectangle border around three or four edges of the canvas, leaving the opening itself as the only place any color happens.
Inside that opening, keep it simple: a flat pale sky taking up most of the space and a small triangular or rectangular rooftop shape along the bottom edge. The frame’s thickness matters more than it seems: a thin frame makes the sky feel expansive and open, while a thick, heavy frame pulls more attention onto the window itself as an object.
This is a fast one, ten minutes gets the frame and two flat shapes blocked in, while forty minutes allows a little texture on the rooftop tiles and a soft gradient in the sky from pale blue near the roofline to a warmer white higher up.
Palette: Payne’s Gray,Sky Blue,Terracotta,Titanium White
Bring back a lone figure with a woman in a wide hat seen from behind against a flat sky, letting the hat’s curve carry almost the entire composition. Paint the sky first as one smooth flat field, then build the figure from the hat downward, since getting that wide curved brim right early makes the rest of the shoulders and body much easier to place correctly underneath it.
Measuring the hat’s width against the width of her shoulders keeps the proportions convincing, a brim that is too narrow stops reading as a wide sunhat and starts looking like an ordinary hat instead. Keep the body below the hat as a few simple vertical shapes in one solid color, since from behind there is no face to worry about and almost no detail needed at all.
If the hat brim looks flat and stiff, add one soft curved shadow underneath its edge where it meets her shoulders, which instantly gives it some lift and shape.
Palette: Sand Beige,Sky Blue,Terracotta,Titanium White
Line up a little rhythm with a row of beach huts painted in flat bright shapes, a subject that rewards a steady hand and a bit of planning before the brush ever touches canvas. Sketch the row lightly first, spacing each hut evenly with a ruler so the repetition feels deliberate rather than accidental.
Paint each hut as a simple box with a peaked or flat roof, cycling through two or three colors across the row so no two neighboring huts match, then add the sand and sky as broad flat fields behind and beneath them. If you enjoy this kind of rhythmic repeating subject, the staircase idea earlier in this list uses the same trick of varying color across a repeated shape, and the cheerful color sense here pairs well with the ideas in bold modern still life painting if you want to keep exploring flat color blocking elsewhere.
If the row starts to look uneven, step back from the canvas and check that each hut sits on the same baseline before adding any final detail.
You Will Need
- a ruler for even hut spacing
Palette: Terracotta,Phthalo Turquoise,Powder Pink,Titanium White
Drop a single car under a lone palm tree at midday, a composition that leans on hard shadow and a nearly cloudless flat sky. Paint the sky first as a pale, almost white field since midday light bleaches color out rather than deepening it, then block in the ground as a warm flat tone just slightly darker than the sky.
Paint the palm trunk as one tall narrow shape with a small cluster of fronds at the top, casting a short, tight shadow straight down rather than off to one side, which is exactly what midday sun does and what separates this piece from the earlier palm shadow wall. Block the car in as a simple flat-colored box shape with a few window lines, parked directly beneath the frond cluster.
If the shadow stretches too far across the ground, that is the tell that the light reads as late afternoon rather than midday, shorten it until it sits close and tight under the tree.
Palette: Sand Beige,Sage Green,Terracotta,Titanium White
Loosen everything up with an abstract seascape made entirely of long horizontal strokes, a satisfying piece after so many hard-edged geometric subjects on this list. Load a wide flat brush generously and pull each stroke straight across the canvas in one smooth pass, working from the top of the canvas down so sky strokes come first and water strokes follow.
Vary the pressure slightly from stroke to stroke, a little heavier where waves might catch the light and lighter where the water sits calm, which keeps the piece feeling painterly rather than mechanically striped. Leaving a few thin gaps of bare canvas or an earlier color peeking between strokes, especially near where sky meets water, gives the whole thing a sense of depth that a single flat pass never achieves.
If the strokes start looking too uniform and stiff, slightly curve the last two or three near the bottom edge, since even a gentle curve reads as water in motion.
Palette: Phthalo Turquoise,Deep Ultramarine,Titanium White,Sky Blue
Capture motion with a dancer mid-leap against a plain flat wall, a figure piece that depends entirely on getting one confident pose right. Sketch the pose first in thin paint, working from the torso outward, since a leap reads correctly only when the angle of the hips and the stretch of both legs agree with each other.
Keep the dancer as a single bold silhouette in one solid color against the flat wall behind, with maybe one highlight stroke along an arm or leg catching the light, rather than any attempt at folds of fabric or detailed anatomy. Checking the figure’s height against the leap’s width before finishing the pose keeps the proportions believable, a leap that is too tall and narrow looks like standing rather than flying through the air.
If the pose looks stiff, loosen the trailing arm and leg into a softer curve rather than a straight line, which instantly adds a sense of motion.
Palette: Terracotta,Titanium White,Payne’s Gray,Powder Pink
Close the list the way it started, with another tight crop, this time a bold slice of a monstera leaf in deep green filling nearly the whole canvas. Paint the background first as a simple flat pale field, then block the leaf in as one large confident shape in deep green, working the characteristic splits and holes into the silhouette as you paint rather than cutting them in afterward.
A kneaded eraser pressed gently into the still-slightly-wet paint can lift a thin vein line straight out of the green, which is often faster and cleaner than trying to paint each vein on top in a lighter color. Keep the leaf’s edge slightly varied rather than perfectly smooth, since real monstera edges are never quite even and a touch of irregularity sells the shape far better than a crisp machine-cut outline.
If you want more close botanical studies after this one, the leaf shapes and bold color blocking in oil pastel drawing ideas with bold color make a good companion project.
You Will Need
- a kneaded eraser for lifting vein lines
Palette: Sap Green,Deep Ultramarine,Titanium White,Raw Umber
What to Do Next
Pick whichever idea matches your wall best, a calm single chair for a reading nook or a bold red dress on salt flats for a bigger statement piece, and set up a small canvas today. Block in the flat background first, let it sit for a few minutes, then bring in the one subject that makes the whole thing yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes an oil painting look modern rather than traditional?
Flat color fields, bold crops and simple geometric shapes make an oil painting read as modern. Dropping fine detail and shading in favor of large confident color blocks, a light open background and one strong subject gives that contemporary gallery feel.
Do I need expensive oil paints to start a modern oil painting?
No, a basic student grade set in five or six colors covers every idea on this list. Terracotta, teal, powder pink, sage and white mix into nearly every shade needed, so a small starter set is genuinely enough.
What size canvas works best for these modern oil painting ideas?
A small canvas, around eight by ten inches or similar, works best for all of these ideas. The bold crops and flat shapes were designed to fill a small surface completely, so a smaller canvas actually makes each composition easier to finish in one sitting.
How long does oil paint take to dry between layers on these pieces?
Oil paint usually stays workable for a day or two and reaches a safe recoat stage within a few days, depending on thickness and the room’s humidity. Most pieces here use thin, flat layers of paint, which dry a little faster than heavy impasto work.
Can I paint these modern oil painting ideas with acrylic paint instead?
Yes, acrylic paint works for every idea on this list since all of them rely on flat color blocking rather than oil-specific blending techniques. Acrylic dries faster, which actually makes the crisp straight edges in pieces like the staircase or the pool ladder easier to keep clean.