Acrylic Paints

 

My personal choice of  acrylic paints: Liquitex Professional Heavy Body and Winsor and Newton Artists quality : buttery texture  for impasto ; high level of pigmentation; minimal colour shift.

 Wide range of mediums  are available,  (mainly for texture) including a fabric medium which gives a softer handle when paint is applied to fabric. I mainly use matt medium or  sometimes gloss medium plus gesso to prime surfaces  when  required.  

Acrylic paint dries very fast which is both an advantage and disadavantage! To keep the paints workable, squeeze a small amount out at a time into a stay-wet palette ( a layer of  damp blotting paper with a piece of greaseproof paper over the top). My  homemade-version using a  sealable lunch box goes on my travels along with trial -sized paints   

 Golden Fluid acrylics are  intensely pigmented and are  my choice for watercolour effects - a little goes a very long way!

Acrylics  paints have been around since the 1960's - for a fascinating overview  of their impact  do read Philip Ball's The Invention of Colour.  It is a fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion and can be use thickly (impasto) like oils, or in thin washes like watercolour. Rather than using solvents, it is non toxic (although be aware of some pigments) non smelly and can be mixed with water or medium/gels and the brushes cleaned with water. However it is waterproof once dried so  while it can be overpainted without disturbing the underlying layers  it cannot be removed by re-wetting the paint. Do wear old clothes when painting!  
 

There are a large range of paints available.  While student or craft quality are fine when you’re starting out, my preference is for professional or artists quality. This mainly because the concentration of pigment is much higher (and it is pigment rather than dye) with less ‘filler’ and the range of colours greater.  Although I’ve also found that you need fewer colours as pure pigments give better results. They also come with information about how light fast the paint is and are consistent in their quality and characteristics across the range.  A little goes a long way (particularly with the Golden Fluid Acrylics which are incredibly intense.) They are also less likely to have a wet to dry colour shift where your painting changes in tonal value compared to the colour you painted with ( generally darker and more matt).  I  remember at primary school mixing ‘Marvin’ (PVA) with poster paints and being very disappointed when my nice pastel colours dried to a horrid dark mud .Well the same thing applies  with acrylic paint -  the binder in acrylic  paints and most acrylic mediums  is  milky white but dries to clear and cheaper paints have more filler

For ‘proper’ painting on canvas and paper,  where I’m more concerned about getting an accurate colour match with the landscapes I’m painting I generally use the Winsor and Newton Professional range which supposedly have less colour shift than most. Mainly though it’s because I’m used to colour-mixing with Winsor and Newton watercolours – I was getting a bit frustrated when supposedly the same colour eg raw sienna was vastly different between brands. 

My preference for fabrics is for Liquitex Heavy Body  because the consistency is great to use with a  palette knife  and they come in plastic tubes which are robust and easy to squeeze out. They're very readily available and you can  buy starter sets quite reasonably and add colours as you wish.

Which leads me on to my next post on colours and colour mixing.  
PS  The post after that will be on tools of the trade including painting knives and brushes. Several of you have already spotted my preference for Liquitex 'Freestyle' paddle brushes. I'll be telling you why later.