About r/oilpainting
In its own words:
r/Oilpainting it's a place to share your OWN paintings, we don't care if you are new or professional, all art are welcome. we only allow real oilpaints, not digital or AI generated, both will get you banned.
Community guide
r/oilpainting (#991, about 1.1 million) is for sharing your own paintings in real oil paint—beginners and professionals alike. Digital work and AI images are banned.
What belongs
Finished pieces and studies (about 46 posts/day; images and galleries). Rules require kindness, oil-painting relevance, proper image crops and NSFW tags; they ban recommending hazardous materials without caveats and commercial plugging, and they limit a first-time painter label to actual beginners.
Versus Watercolor, DigitalPainting and painting
Watercolor and DigitalPainting are different media; painting is the umbrella. This room wants physical oil paint only.
Practical pointers
Crop to the work; don’t pass off digital or AI pieces as oil.
The community was created on Sep 22, 2011, which makes it 15 years old. Since Oct 26, 2026, it has gained 1,609 subscribers (+0.15%). Among the 20 communities on our art list it is number 8 by size. Among the 9 communities on our painting list it is number 4 by size. It sits just behind r/weddingshaming (#989) and ahead of r/euphoria (#992) in our ranking.
What sets r/oilpainting apart
Compared with other large communities, r/oilpainting leans heavily on images (63% of recent posts; the typical Top 100 subreddit sits at 22%). r/oilpainting is more of a browsing community than a debating one: 5.6 comments per post on average, well under the Top 100 median of 13.0. For its size it is unusually busy: about 42.7 new posts a day per million members, more than 82% of the Top 100.
Subscriber growth
Between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026, r/oilpainting went up from 1,060,411 to 1,067,452 subscribers (+7K, +0.66%). That is about 160 new members per day. The chart shows 9 weekly subscriber counts.
What r/oilpainting talks about
Across 288 recent posts (Oct 29–Nov 5), the words that come up most are “oil”, “painting”, “canvas”, “portrait” and “paint”. Other frequent themes are help, panel, finished, advice, study and paintings. Recurring phrases include “oil painting”, “cactus gaze”, “western cowgirl” and “cowgirl oil”. By format, 63% are images, 26% are galleries and 10% are text posts.
Popular post flairs: I did a thing! (146), critique ok! (80), question? (17), Technical question? (13), Art question? (12), UNKIND critique plz (10).
Activity and best time to post
r/oilpainting gets about 46 new posts a day. The public archive holds 109,542 posts and 616,104 comments in total, about 5.6 comments per post.
Rules of r/oilpainting
The moderators of r/oilpainting list 9 rules. In short:
- be kind
- Should be relevant to oil painting.
- Do not recommend hazmats w/o caveats
- Commercial plugging prohibited
- Tag NSFW
- Self Promotion
- Civilized Political Discussion
- First time oil painter only for beginners
- Crop Image Properly
How to join
Open reddit.com/r/oilpainting and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.
Frequently asked questions
How big is r/oilpainting?
r/oilpainting has 1,067,452 subscribers (Nov 2, 2026), which makes it the #991 safe-for-work subreddit in the SubMouse ranking. It added 7,041 members between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026.
How old is r/oilpainting?
r/oilpainting was created on Sep 22, 2011, so it has been around for 15 years.
How active is r/oilpainting?
Very active: r/oilpainting gets about 46 new posts a day (average of the last four weeks). Over its lifetime the archive counts 109,542 posts and 616,104 comments. In a sample of 288 recent posts we counted 251 different authors.
What is r/oilpainting about?
The community describes itself as: “r/Oilpainting it's a place to share your OWN paintings, we don't care if you are new or professional, all art are welcome. we only allow real oilpaints, not digital or AI generated, both will get you banned.” Recent post titles often mention oil, painting, canvas, portrait and paint. Most posts are images (63%).
Is r/oilpainting safe for work?
Yes. Reddit does not mark r/oilpainting as an 18+ (NSFW) community, and its own rules forbid NSFW content. SubMouse lists safe-for-work subreddits only.
How do I post on r/oilpainting?
Join the community on Reddit first, then use “Create post”. r/oilpainting accepts both text and link posts, with images and galleries enabled. It has 9 posted rules, starting with: “be kind”; “Should be relevant to oil painting.”; “Do not recommend hazmats w/o caveats”. Moderators remove posts that break the rules, so read them in the sidebar before posting.
Which communities are like r/oilpainting?
Communities with similar topics include r/DigitalPainting (3.7M), r/minipainting (1.3M), r/painting (4.6M), r/ImaginaryArchitecture (1.2M) and r/Watercolor (1.1M).
Stats from public data (data updated Nov 2, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Nov 6, 2026). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/oilpainting.