Hand-painted oil or fine art print: what actually differs

01The same image, not the same object

On almost every page in the collection you will find the same work offered twice: Oil Painting and Fine Art Print. The subject does not change between them, and neither do the ten sizes or the framing options. What changes is how the surface is made, and that is the whole decision.

02What a hand-painted oil gives you

Paint has body. Under a raking light an oil shows ridges where the brush loaded, thin passages where it dragged, and a direction of stroke that follows the subject rather than a grid. That relief is the reason a painting reads as a painting from across a room, before any detail is legible.

It is also a single object. Two oils of the same work are never quite identical, because a hand made both, and the one you receive was painted for your order and no one else's.

03What a fine art print gives you

A print reproduces the source image exactly, at every size, with no interpretation between the file and the canvas. Fine detail that a brush would simplify survives intact. It costs materially less than the painted version, and it is ready far sooner.

What it does not have is surface. Held at arm's length under directional light, a print is flat; that flatness is neither a defect nor a secret, it is what a print is.

04The price gap is on the page, not in a rule

The gap between the two widens with size, and it is never the same proportion twice. There is no point quoting a figure here that would be wrong by the time you read it: the product page lists both prices against every one of the ten sizes, and the one you select is the one charged.

05Time in the workshop

A hand-painted oil takes one to four weeks depending on its size, the complexity of the subject and how many paintings are in the order. A print is produced far faster. The window that applies to the painting you are looking at is shown on its own page, above the size table, and the shipping terms set out the transit time that follows it.

06Which to choose

Choose the oil when the painting is the thing the room is built around, when it will be seen from close up, or when it is a gift meant to outlast the occasion. Choose the print when you are filling a wall with several works, when the budget is fixed, or when the piece is decorative rather than central. Neither choice limits the other: size, presentation and frame are chosen separately, and both media are shipped free.