Can you mix oil and acrylic paint. It is typically not recommended to mix oil paints and acrylic paints together on your palette before applying them to the canvas. Generally it is not a good idea to mix oil paints and acrylic paints together on your palette before applying them to the canvas. If you want to paint one first and then the other it is okay to paint oils over acrylics but never paint acrylics over oils. Acrylics and oil paints do not mix in themselves but acrylics can be a useful medium for providing the underglaze for an oil painting. Thin glazes of acrylic on canvas will likely not fill the tooth of the canvas completely giving the oil paint something to grip onto. If you want to use them together use oil pastels over on the dried acrylic paints for the best results and to prevent cracking. The bond between oil paint and acrylic is a mechanical one not a chemical one think glued or stuck together rather than intertwined or mixed. Underglazing is the application of a paint layer that forms. Typically it is safe to mix water based colors such as acrylic paints tempera gouache colors or watercolors but oil and water based colors are not mixed in traditional painting.