As an artist I have been using various mediums since childhood and as a beginner I started with basic water colours and later on moved to poster colours because water colours were more transparent and I took a dislike for them after a while.

Poster colours are thicker and opaque in nature and it suited my style of painting as I always used thick layers of paint in all my artwork. Painting in poster colours also suited me because of the quick-drying ability like watercolours as both mediums were water-based and allowed me to work quickly over the painted areas much faster.

But I always felt that this medium lacked the radiant appearance in the final work and altering the painted area was a little impossible. For years I have been working with oil colours trying various methods and techniques which I also learnt from my grandfather who was also an artist who loved to paint in watercolours.

Over a short period of time, I ventured into fabric painting as I was fascinated by the dye-based colours and it was quite a different experience to paint on a different surface though cumbersome as it appeared.

I have painted on cotton weaved surfaces also but the preparatory factors and the necessity to preserve the fabric work after the finished painting was equally challenging. I gradually decided to shift back to my mainstream painting of working poster colours and eventually, the fascination for fabric painting came to an end.

By 1999 I started working with oil paints which I found very alluring. The technique itself was a process of working in unison with linseed oil and turpentine which made the oil painting an incredible medium to paint. It involved so much of flexibility that the prospects of altering the painting areas are possible to a high extent because of its slow drying time. Even if the surface areas dry, the layers of pigmentation under the surface take more time to dry, especially in non- summer conditions.

Adding more amount of mediums over and above the existing layer makes the paint area more flexible in proportion which I discovered with oil pigments. I discovered that oils had a kind of lustrous appearance compared to any other medium of paints that I have used for my art.

The use of linseed oils acts as an important medium to mix the paints but also increases the drying time of the oil paints. While it has its advantages, it also comes with opposite effects since it is quite long a wait before a different colour can be painted over the same area.

The long painting procedure does produce remarkable results, as the picture appears to be almost photo realistic with oils irrespective of any surface the art work is done on. It is one medium which always leaves an extreme fulfilment to any artist who has had a commendable experience in using this medium.

By 2017 I attempted to use acrylic paints as my base coating for my oil painting as the drying time was very quick compared to the oils and they are made of pigment suspended in acrylic polymer which also are water resistant once they are dry.

Acrylics helped to cover many areas of the painting surfaces where not much of detailing was required. I started this technique as a trial so that not only the less detailed areas are covered with acrylics but it was much easier to assess the exact colouring that was required over a particular area and use that acrylic stage (otherwise called as the block-in- stage) as a reference image apart from the original source reference. Together with the original photograph and the acrylic coloured stage help to decide the exact colours that would be overpainted with oil colours.

With the quick drying time of the acrylics, it made it easier to start overlaying or overpainting with oils as the detailing could be quickly done over a particular area since acrylic colours have already filled the background.

Though many artists like to complete their entire painting with acrylics I used acrylics only for underpainting to quicken the time taken to complete the total painting which included oils.