Have you tried painting with acrylics? Do you love them as much as I do? If you haven’t tried them, what are you waiting for? It’s the new year. Get started!
As I may have mentioned in a previous letter, acrylics are great because they dry fast. But that’s not the only reason to love them. Acrylics are versatile and can be used for a wide variety of effects.
In the next few weeks, I will be teaching some classes on acrylic techniques, so I thought I would post a few tips in the blog and newsletter as well.
Acrylic paints were developed in the early part of the 20th century and became commercially available in the 1950’s. They consist of pigment suspended in acrylic polymer immersion which can be thinned with water, but the paint film is not water-soluable after it dries. Wet acrylic polymer is a milky color, but it dries clear, so acrylic paints dry darker than they appear when wet. Acrylic polymer is available without pigment and is called acrylic “medium”. Manufacturers of artist quality paints have developed an amazing array of mediums with additives to modify the viscosity, transparency, and drying time. All of these mediums can be mixed with paints in a wide variety of techniques to mimic other types of paint or to create effects not possible with other media. (Note that the plural of acrylic “medium” is “mediums”, but oil and watercolor are painting “media”).
Next week…. More about how acrylic paint film is formed and how to manipulate it.