Hi Judy, hope you are feeling better. Wc vs oil, agree with all your points and add some prefer oils for surface texture, not flat like wc Certainly glare can be an issue especially for decorators. I' m sure there are others our oil painting buddies can come up with. Like the sensuality of the paint texture-butter. The fact that wc is the more difficult medium should carry no weight.The same goes for the conservative Transparent wc artist.The end product is what matters. To me there is nothing worse than a sappy,washed out watercolor that is done using strictly transparent watercolor of a worn-out subject. Difficulty does not matter. Unfortunately the wc market is flooded with mediocre art. There are mediocre oil paintings also but for the reasons you mentioned above such as a retirment hobby and asscessabilty of the medium there seem to be more out there. Watercolor students are taught too many rules which I think blocks creativity. We refer to Sargent's beautiful watercolors but let's face it hasn't been another Sargent in 100 years and his fame came from his oils. Comments from a watercolor artist at heart.
