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> Why are most portrait paintings made using oil rather than acrylic? Should I be using one or the other?

Oil is probably the most flexible of paints in terms of the number and variety of techniques you can use with it.

> Should I be using one or the other?

There's more to choose from in paints than just oils and acrylics! Gouache (a matte, fast drying paint that reactivates when you get it wet again) and casein (the oldest paint known to man, it uses milk protein as it's medium, dries a bit slower than gouache) are both good options for beginners, with gouache being the cheaper of the two. You can use either of them on good watercolor paper; 140 lb paper is a good compromise, as it's not as a expensive as heavier papers but is heavy enough to hold up without buckling badly, even more so if you stretch it first.

Watercolor is also inexpensive, but is probably the most difficult to do well and is very unforgiving; you don't really get to fix your mistakes with watercolor.

Ultimately you will want to experiment with different paints and find the one or ones you like most. (I, personally, am not a fan of acrylics. I don't like the way it handles; it feels like painting with melted plastic to me.)

> What is the cheapest way to practice painting? I bought a few canvases yesterday and was surprised to see how expensive they can be! Also I was surprised by how much paint I was going through.

Gouache on watercolor paper, like I said before, is a good, inexpensive way to start out.

If you want to use other paints, though, don't buy canvases while you're practicing. You can use pretty much any paint on gessoed paper that's relatively heavy, or even stiff cardboard.

When I took oil painting back up again not that long ago I did several pieces on gessoed bristol board which I had lying around. When I'd had enough of those I switched to these 8x10 canvas panels and a big pack of mixed size panels; in bulk they're much cheaper than stretched canvas and are easier to store.

When you're starting with a new paint you're unsure of, just get a tube of ivory black and titanium white and do some grayscale studies with it. You can get comfortable with the handling of the paint without spending a ton of money, and it's always good practice for developing your sense of values.

If you then want to do portraits, you can then move easily into a Zorn palette using the black and white you already have, plus yellow ochre and a good, opaque red like cadmium red medium. (Zorn used vermilion for his red, which is wildly toxic and which no one makes any more.) The color pieces I did on bristol board earlier are Zorn head studies done with that palette, and I also used it for this portrait and this one.

Add to the Zorn palette a good blue like an ultramarine or cobalt and you've got a pretty good starter palette. Add in a burnt umber and you can mix your own black if you want, using the blue and the umber, and swap out the yellow ochre for something less earthy like a cadmium yellow medium if you need something more primary colored. You end up with a small, focused palette that didn't cost you an arm and a leg and that you can mix anything but really intense secondary colors with. And since you don't need those often, you can just pick up small tubes of them as needed.

With paints that aren't too fast drying, like oils, you can collect up all the left over paint on your palette at the end of the day, mix it all together, and make a rich grey-brown that you can use to desaturate any other color on your palette or just lighten and darken anywhere you need a neutral color. Sealed in a airtight container you can use it for days, weeks, or longer depending on the paint. If you end up with more than you can use, just do some grayscale studies with it!

> What can I do to develop a better eye for color?

Start with just black and white. Then do some paintings with just black, white, and one other color; this one, my first one on a canvas panel, was just black, white, and red, as was this one I did next. And just slowly build up your number of colors from there. Do a lot of painting with just a primary palette, too; black or burnt umber / white / red / blue / yellow, where you have to mix everything else from those. You won't be able to get super intense colors that way but, again, you really want to keep most of your colors more desaturated anyway.

Painting simple still lifes of primary colored objects is very good practice. Wooden blocks like these are really good for color studies; set up a few of them, put a piece of black cloth or paper behind them, shine a desk light on them, and paint the colors as accurately as you can.