media and techniques

At different times, I've focused on a particular medium or technique to the exclusion of others. In high school, I did almost everything in pencil or pen-and-ink. In college, I went almost totally to oils. In design and illustration work, pre-computer graphics, I did mostly ink with color washes. For the last few years, I've worked more with watercolor and acrylic. For book illustration, now as always, I find pen-and-ink to be the most practical because the printing process, in order to achieve maximum reproduction accuracy, requires a crispness of line difficult to achieve in any other way. These are the media in which I generally work, although I have been known to dabble in woodblocks. Increasingly, especially for art cards, I combine approaches - doing the basic painting in watercolor and adding detail with pen-and-ink. I also use multimedia in collage work, and I've lately been experimenting with painting on nontraditional surfaces and then glazing them.

advantages and disadvantages ...

There probably isn't a perfect medium or approach. Oils have a richness that is more difficult to achieve in other media. Watercolors have the advantage of unique freshness and spontaneity. Acrylics combine good qualities from both oils and watercolors, capable of being laid on thickly and worked like oils or of being thinned and applied almost like watercolor. Pen-and-ink requires the most precision and confidence of line, but rewards with the most-precise outcome. The list could go on. Each medium has its proponents. Whichever one prefers, in my experience, has more to do with personal capabilities and desire to achieve a certain result rather than with any inherent superiority of the medium or technique itself.