The Big Acrylic Painting Thread

[drd]

If I go to any search on the web for 'Acrylic tutorials' or 'Acrylic process', etc, I come up with about 1/4 as much info as I do oils. I do the same with oils and I find so much more content and learning material. I can find step by step process tutorials that actually help me, not like when I search for acrylics. I mean, even in CA, it's the same thing. We've got The Big Oil-Painting Thread but I haven't found an equivalent for acrylics (If there is one, please show me because I need all of the info that I can get).

Well anyways, my main beef is that I can find tuts down to the brush stroke for oils sometimes, but mostly all I get for acrylics is, "First, I painted in the sky. I then painted in the water. Next I painted in the beach."
Wow, thanks. =/ Along with other additional info like "Acrylics dry quickly. Get nice brushes. Work using layers."
*vaguevaguevague* All the while.


Anyways, are there any acrylic process vids out there? Just so I know how I should be starting a painting?

Above was my original question for the threads original purpose: 'Acrylic Painting - Why less content?"
Well I hope that will be rectified, I got a lot of helpful info from the great guys here and someone came up with the idea to make this the Big Acrylic Painting Thread, so here it is.

[Elwell]

More info than you'll ever be able to use (plus they make some of the best paint in the world):
http://www.goldenpaints.com/

[k4pka]

The fundamental stuff for painting of any kind crosses all mediums. The only tecnhnical stuff you need to know about acrylic painting I would bet you already know.

[Seedling]

Bah. I'll just have to write a Big Acrylic Painting Thread. It'll be a while, though; I'm still unpacking and I have no internets at the new house yet. In the mean time if anyone else wants to write a Big Acrylic thread, go right ahead. . . *nudge nudge*

[Qitsune]

Thank you Tristan!
Seriously, most of the pros here use oil except for those who do the underpainting in acrylics and finishing with oil thing. That's why there is more info about oil. I'm also starting to suspect there is a wee bit of a stigma attached to acrylics. Oh well...

[Seedling]

Heehe. . . if you want to really see the acrylic stigma, got to the wetcanvas forums. I have never seen so many people producing so much shit be so stuck up about their media of choice.

[Elwell]

Wetcanvas is deviantArt for AARP members.

[Seedling]

*rolling on the floor laughing*

[drd]

Eh, yeah, I suppose.

Do you think it would just be worth it to just ditch acrylics, and work with oils? They seem to be the preferred medium of choice of all the professional artists out there. Come to think of it, I don't think there is a single living master who uses acrylics...

Well, if I'm going to switch to oils, I also need to ask this:

Can I use them in a room other people also use? My art corner is in the computer room, so my Dad is sometimes in there. I know that there are fume problems associated with that, but I've also read that's just the turpentine, and fumes aren't a problem with regular oils, like linseed. And do oils themselves let off harmful fumes? I don't want to be putting bad air into the house.

[Elwell]

At your level of ability, don't deal with oils yet. They'll just frustrate you.

[drd]

Yeah, I guess you're right. I've always wondered if acrylics were kind of like a 'stepping stone' to oils, per se. Never asked, though.

[Cory Hinman]

The guy I'm studying pastel with has been a portrait painter and muralist for 40 years. He's worked in everything but when he teaches advanced students painting in the summer he teaches acrylic, because of the easy set-up and take-down, but also he insists he's found people who start their painting experience with acrylic find an easier time transitioning to oils than painters in oils find adapting their experience to acrylic.

[Texahol]

acrylics are easier to work with for newbies, because they dry a lot quicker, which allows fast working in layers. and you can cover up stuff within a sitting. You also do'nt have to worry about your colors turning to mud, and be overly concerned with your cool/warms because you can cover up pretty opaque, unlike oils, where the series of colors you've laid down will ultimately show through.

instead of desperately searching for information. Just start painting. You'll develop your own techniques. Look at people who USE acrylics on the internet, shoot them an email or PM...or post in their sketchbooks. I've found most people are very responsive to questions. But it's mostly mileage. Get used to painting wet into wet, and working with layers, thinning out with water [ not too much!] using mediums...etc. Mileage is most important.

[thinairart]

I've worked in both, but I think working in acrylics has taught me a lot about edges. Acrylics (sans a drying retardant) can be so unforgiving when it comes to blending, you are almost forced to explore different ways of creating interesting edges. Layering, scumbling, rubbing, scraping with an xacto- its like full contact painting. Beating my head against acrylics also got me thinking about using intermediate values and temp. variations instead of just blending, which I think is one of the hard parts about oils for beginners... its easy to just feather edges until they melt into the canvas, so over blending can become a crutch to conceal a number of bigger problems (such as mismatched values).

And if you like the look of oils, you can get kind of there with acrylics + medium. As mentioned, Golden makes some kick ass paints, gels and mediums. They have a gloss medium, that when mixed with acrylic paint produces an oil like gloss. When it comes to mixing with water, feel free, but personally I prefer mixing with a medium. The resulting paint has good even consistency, holds a brush stroke well, and will extend the mileage of your paints more effectively then water without over thinning.

[Seedling]

Well, if I'm going to switch to oils, I also need to ask this:

There is a link in my sig to information on oil paints for you.

I do recommend starting with acrylics. Unlike oils, acrylics have no established rules; and because they dry more quickly and don't involve so many fumes, they are easier to fit cleanly into your current shared environment.

[arttorney]

Might as well turn this into the acrylics thread. Tip #1: get one of those spray bottles you mist plants with. Without hosing down the paint on your palette periodically, you are limited on how much of a color you can mix up at once and also limited on how much time you can mess around using it. (I don't like acrylics much because the relative humidity is so low where I live. It looks like you live in a state that might give you a little more time to make your painting decisions, and the misting spray bottle might just be the ticket.)

Tip #2: If you like impasto painting then get an acrylic texture medium while you are down at the store. They got all kinds of pre-mixes like "stucco medium" and a nice stiff glossy medium that's a little like painting with cake frosting. The acrylic paint itself is hard to mound up into geologic formations without a medium.

[Seedling]

BTW, I do have a big write-up on acrylics in the works!

[drd]

Woops, I was going to reply earlier, I had to leave though. Arttorney, thanks for that, I appreciate it. Yeah, I kind of figured I might have to do an impasto kind of thing because of how hard it is to blend with acrylics, but if I get some kind of retarder then I might be able to. I wouldn't know, I've never used one. In any case, I should be heading to the store sometime this week (with any luck).

That's great Seedling! I think it would be really nice to have a Big Acrylic Painting Thread here, as I'm sure there are many other people who are not overly satisfied about what they can do with it...

At any rate, here's an acrylic study that has been in my SB for a couple of days but I never posted it here:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v399/darkrulerdaniel/sketchbook115.jpg

[bdfoster]

Come to think of it, I don't think there is a single living master who uses acrylics...


Michael Whelan? John Jude Palencar? Vin Difate? John Berkey? Bob Eggleton? Chris Moore? Jacek Yerka? Dave DeVries? Jim Burns? There's a bunch of "modern masters" still using the medium and using it well.

The challenge with finding demos/FAQs/step-by-steps online is in part due to the versatility of the medium. How Michael Whelan paints is very different than how John Berkey paints. Factor in that many illustrators using acrylic today include some mix of application (airbrush and brush being the most common, though someone like DeVries can be even more eccentric) and the incredible diversity of mediums, and you've got a lot of bases to cover. Acrylic can look like watercolor or oils or anything in between, all depending on how it's applied.

I recommend starting abstract. Focus on the different applications, textures, edges, mediums, thicknesses, opacities, etc that you can play with in acrylics. Do a lot of studies first. Then try and find a couple of techniques that seem to work for the image you are trying to create, and use them. Then go back and study some more. It's a fun medium, and well worth dipping into for starters.

[arttorney]

Yeah. I guess it kind of depends on who is a master. I think Chuck Close's big self portrait looks kind of cool, and it is acrylic. For an enormous painting, you either need to go solvent free, or use water media. Spreading a quart of turpentine around thin is likely to gas you out.

[MarkHarchar]

Another option is to get a slow drying acrylic additive. They will then still work like acrylics, but the slower drying time (which still isn't that of oil) will start to give you ideas of how oils can be manipulated.

[Elwell]

A tip: when doing blends in a feathered semi-drybrushed manner, you get smoother results working from dark to light.

[jinxtigr]

Jacek Yerka is a pretty unanswerable argument for the validity of acrylics as a choice. I've got an art book by him and what he does is phenomenal, original, and clearly works to the nature of what acrylics are. Even so, I think I can see the sort of plasticky quality acrylics have, but what he's doing is so amazing you can't really complain. I love his technique.

I've got lots of acrylics, bad ones ('Duro'! Awful textures) and have tried to make paintings with them, but never successfully. The idea of using them as underpainting is a lot more appealing. I always felt I got more out of diluting them like crazy and spraying them with a mini spraygun, and now I've got some Badger airbrush paints to save me the trouble of trying to break up chunks of Duro ;)

I think most of it is simply about the glow and finish- it's rather like acrylic being a digital amp modeler and oils being a tube Fender or something. You can enjoy the convenience all you like, you can take great pains to not fall into the most obvious traps acrylic has as far as looking like a multicolored plastic toy, you can do all kinds of glazes and semitransparent everything, and in the end it STILL looks a bit plastic. The quality of the work is far more important, and can completely distract from that, but I don't think you can really get away from it. The closest I've come is with semitransparent sprayed acrylic that was almost all gloss medium.

I could easily see artists, like Yerka, so mastering their technique that they choose acrylics simply to support their style and workflow- but I can also see a lot of people not willing to even go there, and especially I can see people at 'the deviantart of old painters' hating acrylics because they haven't the technique to support anything but automatically-lush-looking oils :)

Honestly, I could see just slopping a bunch of oils onto a canvas in order to look at how the light plays through them, which would be laziness in the extreme. Try that with acrylics, you'll throw up! But I think that makes you work harder. But it also makes you more frustrated :)

[Chris Bennett]

A tip: when doing blends in a feathered semi-drybrushed manner, you get smoother results working from dark to light.

There is a good reason for this:
Acrylics, over three quaters of their tonal range dry a stop darker and a touch 'redder'. Thus a lighter layer put over a dark will drop back a bit in contrast when dry. A darker mixture laid over a lighter one will 'step away' a shade or two in tone from the colour it is being laid on since it is drying darker and thus increase the contrast when dry.

[Elwell]

Exactly.

[Seedling]

There is a good reason for this:
Acrylics, over three quaters of their tonal range dry a stop darker and a touch 'redder'. Thus a lighter layer put over a dark will drop back a bit in contrast when dry. A darker mixture laid over a lighter one will 'step away' a shade or two in tone from the colour it is being laid on since it is drying darker and thus increase the contrast when dry.

*lightbulb* That explains so much! Thank you!

As usual, I'm running late with what I'm writing . . . :-P

[Emerald_Mara85]

dark to light!

Argh, that's why my acrylic (1st try today, I've only used watercolour, soft pastels, pencils, charcoal and artist markers...) painting looks weird...thx for the tip!

But I must say, going from light to dark and then clean out the still wet parts does make some cool textures. But it can only be used when trying to paint old chairs that had their paint chip off...haha...

Any other tips for a newbie like me?

[Jasonwclark]

Acrylics, over three quaters of their tonal range dry a stop darker and a touch 'redder'. Thus a lighter layer put over a dark will drop back a bit in contrast when dry. A darker mixture laid over a lighter one will 'step away' a shade or two in tone from the colour it is being laid on since it is drying darker and thus increase the contrast when dry.

That advice is spot on... and something I had to learn the hard way from trial and error. Here's an example of the sort of things that can go wrong when you're blending in Acrylic (and not carefull with you're mediums). My digital camera is not the sweetest, but I think you can get a sense of what Chris and Elwell are talking about.

Portrait of Charles Bukowski
Jason W. Clark
Acrylic on Canvas (incomplete), 36"x48"

[Qitsune]

Robert Bateman's Acrylics process. There could be more pictures but you get the point, and it goes to prove one can do amazing stuff with acrylics.

http://www.robertbateman.ca/art/rbop/rbatemanonpainting.html
(the link thingy doesn't work, ca is acting up again)

[arttorney]

Emerald,

Try experimenting around a little. Acrylics are really good for that because they will adhere to almost anything and so you can practice on the old cardboard backs of paper pads and stuff. You can make collages in acrylic applying absorbent stuff like fabric and paper and then overpainting some or all of it. If you try to do this with oils the oil will seep sideways into the collage stuff you glued on there and make these unsightly sweat rings of oil that will mar whatever the original design was on the fabric or paper you applied.

[drd]

Hey guys, I have to say thanks to all of you for helping me out here.

Did a face...thing. I don't think I'm finished of course. I just drew the outlines with my brush, went from there, etc...

Any tips on modeling, colour, etc?

[Seedling]

Looks like you’re making great progress, drd. Nice transparency with that. Watch out for using opaque layers on top of translucent layers. I often kicked myself for accidentally obliterating good work by doing that. :-)

By the way, I am running WAY too late with the acrylics thing I’m writing, and the information everyone has been sharing here has been awesome, so please go ahead and retitle this thread “the Big Acrylics Thread” any time you feel like it. I’ll add what I write eventually.

Cheers!

[alesoun]

Seedling, please get going with that book!

I've always painted in oils, but after a very long break I'm now doing my second painting in acrylics (been so long my oils are useless).

I HATED working in acrylics for my first painting! The smell, the texture, the whole experience; I just love oils!

BUT,- I'm beginning to like the difference, because I have to think so much harder about what I'm doing, and what I hope to achieve.

My husband works in acrylics, and always has, so that would be useful, except that he wants to take over my painting, and I want to beat him about the head and shoulders!!

He's an excellent painter, and used to teach; but it's a bit like your big bro trying to teach you to drive, if you know what I mean......:S

He paints on plaster on boards he makes himself, and has a technique he uses to make his paintings glow like jewels; every bit as rich as oils.

I'll make you a deal; you write that book and I'll try to persuade him to let me tell you his secret........

[drd]

Looks like you’re making great progress, drd. Nice transparency with that. Watch out for using opaque layers on top of translucent layers. I often kicked myself for accidentally obliterating good work by doing that. :-)

By the way, I am running WAY too late with the acrylics thing I’m writing, and the information everyone has been sharing here has been awesome, so please go ahead and retitle this thread “the Big Acrylics Thread” any time you feel like it. I’ll add what I write eventually.

Cheers!

Will do, thanks for the comment!

I always thought you were supposed to go opaque over translucent, like, you do a wash-in, then build it up with thicker layers? That's how I did this one.

Hm.

@Alesoun: That would be great, if you could get some of his info on here. I'm sure this will be a good thread after a while.

[Seedling]

Nice job with the first post, drd. :)

There’s very little “supposed to” in acrylics. Working opaque over translucent does work pretty well; there’s just that one step from translucent to the first layer of opaque where if you get too aggressive with the opaque layer – either too opaque, the wrong value or color, or if you cover too much space with it – you can find yourself shaking your fist at the sky.

Nonetheless, it is how I prefer to work in acrylics. Here’s an example I made a few years ago.

The drawing was first done on illustration board, and then sealed down with matte medium. Sealing the drawing down accomplishes two things: it freezes the drawing, so that when I clumsily drag my hand across it, it doesn’t smear off the board; and it creates a smooth surface that is less absorbent than the board. That way the paint never switches at clumsy moments from being sucked into the paper to sitting on top of it. Acrylic paint also dries slower when it isn’t being sucked into a porous surface.

After that I used matte medium and a brown color to fill in all the values translucently. Then on top of that I blocked in areas of color opaquely. That’s the most risky step in my process. It isn’t necessary to take that particular step, however – you could mess around with further translucent layers, or scrumbled layers.

At any rate, my paintings typically look a bit like cell-shaded animation at that step, and invariably I find myself cringing at how wrong the color or value is, regretting the loss of the work that got hidden underneath, and redoing parts. Then I layer on more subtle colors, sometimes working wet into wet in small patches (quickly, before the paint gets dry), or glazing translucently with lots of matte medium, or scrumbling one color overtop a dried layer of a different color. (I have some absolutely ratty brushes that I use dry to grind the paint across the surface. Drybrushing is a sure way to kill brushes quickly.)

I got the idea for working like this from James Gurney’s book Dinotopia. Gurney works in oils, but in Dinotopia his working method stands out, because he left the images in different states ranging from highly-developed paintings down to pencil drawings with a few washes of translucent colors. If you want to really see how a master layers colors up from a drawing to a finished painting, buy Dinotopia. It’s a fabulous textbook.

Seedling, please get going with that book!

It’s more of an essay than a book, but I’ll try to get it wrapped up soon. :)

My first reaction when switching mediums has always been frustration, too. I hated oils so much that I wasted two perfectly good oil-painting classes loathing the medium! And now I love them.

I advise tickling your husband to fend him off. ;) If you feel like sharing his secrets, I certainly wouldn’t object! If he has process shots that he would be willing to share, this would be a great place to put them.

Cheers!

[drd]

Wow, a very informative post, thanks for that.

Yeah, that's kind of how I did that earlier one with the nose, I did a wash in of the basic values, and then I tried to put opaque over it. I hate it, because I have to have such a huge glob of paint to be able to work around with it easily. I recently got some Gel Medium from Liquitex, which was supposed to make blending easier. I tried it but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. Maybe I just didn't use enough. =/

[Qitsune]

I typically work a in glaze over glaze over scrumble, over glaze over underpainting kind of way. Which gives things like these :
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/Akashas.jpg
Here is a process shot.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/graveyardunder4small.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/graveyardstep2small.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/qitsune/qitsune-grave2.jpg

I have a warning about matte medium, Seedling probably works quite fast so it worked for her but if you tend to fiddle or try to reblend your colors, matte medium will eventually get milky and screw up your colors, same for "matte" colors. I'd rather use normal colors which are of varying glossiness depending how much I mix them with mediums or water and finish it off at the very end with a few coats of matte varnish to even out the work.

I also found out that working without black or to a smaller extend, without white, isn't as painful as it seems and gives a better result.

[Seedling]

There is a giant lack of information on acrylic paints. There are two reasons for this: acrylics are very new compared to other mediums, and there are almost no rules for painting with acrylics.

Oil paints have been around long enough that we can study paintings done hundreds of years ago. Because such studies are possible, we know that “fat” paints should be used over “lean”, that certain materials crack or discolor if used in certain ways; there are even specific ways of making paintings that allow them to be restored hundreds of years after their creation.

This depth of time-tested knowledge does not yet exist with acrylics. This pretty much means that you are free to do whatever you like with the paints. There is no “right” way to use them yet.

The following should help you get started with acrylics.

You will need a place to work. Unlike oils, ventilation isn’t much of an issue. With the use of a small drop-cloth or some newspaper to protect the furniture, you can paint in your living room or dorm room. Just don’t leave your paints lying about where a small child or pet might get into them, because the pigments can be poisonous if eaten.

Will you need an easel? It depends on what sort of surface you want to work on. If you do want to paint on a canvass or board, then an easel or some equivalent (such as a chair, or the wall) will be useful. At any rate, don’t run out and buy an easel until you’ve messed around and decided that you need one. (Some of my best acrylic paintings were made with the painting on my lap, propped against the kitchen table).

You will need paints, of course. Paint is made up of a ground up substance (the pigment) suspended in a medium (in this case, transparent acrylic medium). The pigments used in acrylic paints are the same pigments used in oils, pastels, watercolors, etc. The difference between these mediums are, well, the mediums used to bind the pigment. A medium is a transparent goo that holds particles of pigment.

Acrylic paint dries by the evaporation of water from the medium. Once it is dry, it is no longer water-soluble. This means that once the paint has dried on the painting (or on your brush or clothing), the paint is permanent. Getting it wet will not cause it to get runny again. This means that the first mistake most people make is to let paint dry on the brush. Oops! That’s a ruined brush.

Pigments. What basic colors are good to start with? It depends.

A traditional inexpensive “student” set used in oil-painting is:

yellow ochre
ivory black,
cadmium red
titanium white

Since the pigments are the same between oils and acrylics, then any color combination that works well with oils ought to work well with acrylics. Notice that this set does not represent a full color-wheel. The ivory black is essentially a very dark blue, and so you do have the three primary colors, red, yellow and blue along with white. With just these four paints, an astonishing number of colors can be mixed.

Another basic student set is the Double Primary palette:

cadmium yellow
lemon yellow
cadmium red
alizarin crimson
ultramarine blue
cobalt blue
white

This gives a palette with a “warm” and a “cool” version of each primary color. Again, intermixture between these can yield an incredible amount of colors, more than enough for masterful painting.

One last super-budget paint-combo is this:

Burnt Umber
Payne’s Grey
Titanium White (optional)

This color combo gives you a monochrome palette but with just enough warms and cools to make it feel colorful. If you use this combination on a white ground, you can get results similar to a charcoal and sanguine drawing. These colors can work well as the first layer of full-color paintings, too.

Try one of these combinations, and when you find you’re frustrated with the limitations of the colors, go supplement this palette with new colors one or two at a time. Also, there is not much reason to bother using student-grade paint. They are a false economy. They cost less because there are less actual pigment particles in the tube, along with more “fillers” like chalk, wax etc. If you want less pigment, you can buy the artist grade variety and add more medium to your paints.

Pigment names can be very confusing. Anything that has “hue” in the name means that it is a replica of an expensive pigment (for example a cadmium pigment) made using a cheaper pigment. Although they may seem more cost effective, they usually aren’t, because the “hue” is never as strong as the original and so you end up using more of it.

You will want to avoid anything called just “red” or “blue” in the name. You generally want the tubes with names that tell you exactly what chemical or organic compound makes up the color, such as “cobalt” or “titanium”. If in doubt, it is always a good idea to research a color on the internet before you buy it.

Mediums. Acrylic medium is transparent acrylic goop without any pigment in it. There are different types of mediums that have different properties, such as gloss medium (this dries with a glossy finish), matte medium (this dries with a non-glossy finish), gel medium (makes the paint feel thicker), etc. This stuff can be added to the paint to extend the drying time, to thin the paint, to make the paint behave differently, or make the paint transparent.

Water can also be used to thin acrylic paints, too. A word of caution, however: as counter-intuitive as it sounds, adding water to acrylics will cause them to dry faster. Water also dilutes the medium, and the medium is the glue that holds the pigment down.

Brushes. Start with cheap brushes, because chances are you will ruin one or two. A good starting set of brushes would be two or three bristle (hog-hair) brushes with chisel-shaped bristles. (The ones with the long bristles are called “flats” and the shorter ones are called “brights”.) Make sure one of those is at least three-fourths of an inch wide, or larger, for filling in large areas.

When you work, you will need a jar of water, a scrap of paper, a clean rag, and a place to lay wet brushes down on their side. Then work in this manner: paint until the paint in the brush seems a bit gummy. Then quickly wipe off the excess paint on the rag, and swish that brush violently in the water until it is as paint-free as possible. Then either dry the brush on the rag and keep painting, or lay down the soaking wet brush while you use another brush.

This is important – acrylic paints ruin brushes quickly. You will want to do the following to make your brushes last longer:

If you switch brushes, and realize it’s going to be an hour before you go back to that first brush, then instead of letting it dry out, go wash it with some soap in the sink. Also, when swishing brushes in your cleaning water, don’t make a habit of mashing the bristles on the bottom of the cup. Instead, if necessary, rub or roll the bristles against the side of the cup.

Generally it’s not a good idea to leave your brushes sitting for long periods of time bristles-down in a cup of water, because the weight of the handle can mash those bristles out of shape. However, Chris Bennett has a method worked out where he uses a large enough container of water that the handles are almost floating. He leaves his brushes this way for upwards of two days without damage.

When you are finished painting, wash the brush bristles in the sink under cool water with soap. (Hot water would cause the metal portion of the brush to expand, which would potentially cause the bristles to come loose.) Re-form the bristle shape with your fingers and lay the brushes on their sides to dry. I have heard of artists who reshape chisel brushes using an alligator clip and a piece of cardboard, but I’ve never tried this myself.

A note about “dry brushing” or “scrumbling”: some really wonderful effects can be achieved by using just a little paint on the tip of a dry brush and scrubbing it around. It’s a good idea to have a few designated scrumbling brushes for this, because the bristles will never go back to their organized starting position after such use!

Once you are confidant that you can keep from accidentally mangling your brushes, pick up one or two new brushes each time you visit the art store. Try them out, and see what works for you.

Rags. Chances are you won’t go through very many rags. Just use an old, clean tee-shirt, or paper-towel.

Paint Water. This nasty stuff can go down the sink when you are done. However, if you are creating large quantities of murky water, or want to be extra nice to the environment, you can let the gunk settle to the bottom, pour the cleaner top water down the drain, and save up that gunk for your town’s recycling day. If you want to do this, it helps to keep several large jars with lids around.

If you are thinning your paints with water, it’s a good idea to keep one jar of water for thinning, and a separate jar of water for cleaning your brushes, so that your light colors aren’t contaminated by gray murk.

It should go without saying that a container used to hold paint should never be used for eating or drinking, so don’t grab one of the family drinking glasses to hold your paint water! Old mayonnaise jars with lids are great, however.

Palette. Almost any non-absorbent flat surface will do. You can wrap tinfoil around a pizza box if you want. However, I suggest at the beginning getting a disposable palette tablet. Later, it might be worth your time to use a sheet of glass, or other smooth, hard surface that can be scraped clean with a razor blade. The advantage of such a perfectly flat palette is that it gives you lots of control with a palette knife. However, if you don’t mind a bit of texture on the surface of your palette, start with a sheet of Masonite or other inexpensive hard surface, and, as Chris Bennett suggests “Allow the paint to just dry on it and carry on – stop when the build up reaches the ceiling (this takes about 30 years) and start with a new one.” Chris uses a particularly thick chunk of MDF so that the moisture from the paint doesn’t cause it to warp. “There is an advantage with this,” says Chris; “it allows you to mix things near a dried tone already on the palette that is close to the one you want and helps to keep you ‘in tune’.

What is most important at the outset is that you have lots of room to mix colors.

Don’t buy one of those plastic palettes with depressions in them unless you wish to use your paints like water-colors. Those little cups are not designed to work with runny liquids such as inks. They aren’t designed for use with a palette knife.

Different brands will stay wet longer. Chris says Liquitex paint, when misted every half hour, can stay wet for six or seven hours; but Cryla brand paints dry much more quickly.

You will need to get into the habit of mixing up more of a color than you need, because unlike oils, part of it will dry on the palette. Figuring out when to have what on your palette and in what quantity requires practice. Expect to waste a lot of paint while figuring it out. Some artists deal with it by pre-mixing colors and keeping those colors in various air-tight containers in the refrigerator. I prefer just mixing up two or three colors when I need them.

Another option is a “wet palette” – a device in which the paints essentially sit on top of a wet sponge. I haven’t tried wet palettes myself, but my college professor Nick Jainschigg had some luck with them. Chris Bennett has tried them but finds they don’t work nearly as well as just the occasional squirt of water with a plant-mister. Before buying a commercially-made wet palette, you could experiment with mixing your paints on a wet paper towel.

Palette knife. This should look like a little trowel and it should have a bend in the neck between the trowel-part and the handle. Use it to mix paints by squashing and scraping the paint on a flat, non-porous surface. You can use your brushes to mix paints, but doing so carelessly is likely to waste paint and shorten the life of your brush. Chris Bennett suggests this: “If you mix by moving the brush backwards and forwards along its direction as opposed to sideways then there will be no problems with wearing out the brushes – sort of being gentle and mindful of what a brush can take – mix like you paint!”

To mix up any large quantity of paint, however, you will need a palette knife. Get the kind that has a neck with a bend in it. Don’t get the kind that looks like a butter knife.

Painting Surfaces. You can paint on any surface that you can get the paints to stick to – cardboard, canvas, the wall of your house, etc. There are two things to consider when picking a surface: how archival is it? And how porous is it?

Non-archival surfaces include things like cardboard and surfaces coated with house-paint. If you are doing a sketch, or you are painting a mural that is only going to be kept around for a few years, then these are perfectly fine surfaces to work on.

Porous surfaces can be archival – for example, watercolor paper, illustration board, or raw canvas. If working on a porous surface, the challenge is this: in the first layers, the surface will suck the water out of the paint, will cause the paint to dry extraordinarily fast; it will cause unstretched surfaces to warp; and there may be a visible difference between the first layer of paint and subsequent layers of paint. However, there are times when you may want the effects or feel of working on a porous surface. For example, if you want to use your acrylics like watercolors.

To make a porous surface non-porous, it needs to be coated with a waterproof material. Two of the most standard waterproof materials to use are acrylic gesso (which is white) or acrylic medium.

Here are some examples of painting surfaces used by professional illustrators:

Gessoed masonite or gessoed, stretched canvas. These are both very typical painting surfaces. Canvas weighs less and bounces around under the brush. The gessoed surface can be tough to draw on, but it can be sanded gloriously flat, or textured while wet with a brush or sponge. These surfaces are wonderful when little or no drawing is required under the painting. Use a cheap house-painting brush to paint down the gesso. Several layers of gesso may be necessary.

Masonite can be bought at hardware stores in giant sheets, but getting it cut can be costly, because it wears out saw-blades in a hurry. So those “overpriced” pre-cut masonite rectangles at the art store actually aren’t so overpriced.

Art stores typically sell pre-stretched canvas, but stretching your own is more gratifying. Basically, to stretch a canvas, you need to assemble a frame, staple canvas to it, and coat with a few layers of gesso.

Illustration board. James gurney ( http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/) starts his oil paintings by first drawing on illustration board, then sealing down the drawing with spray-fixative and then a layer of acrylic medium. Then he paints the first layer of the picture in transparent layers of browns that don’t obliterate the drawing. He switches over to oils to finish his paintings, but this is a great way to start purely acrylic paintings, too. I typically use the same method, minus the spray-fix.

A down-side to using illustration board is that it warps when coated with paint or medium. I counteract this by using a thin variety, which later, I can flatten under a book.

Stretched, gessoed paper. I don’t know of any artists who use this method, but it’s another possibility. Start with a good, thick, large sheet of paper. Soak it in water for five or ten minutes. Staple or tape it to a board, and while still wet, if desired, coat it in gesso or medium. Let it dry, and then trim off the edges. This method (minus the gesso or medium) is wonderful for preparing paper for watercolor. But it does require some planning.

Paper glued to masonite. Donato Giancola uses this method to start his oil paintings, but again, this should be a very useful starting point for acrylics when a detailed drawing is needed as a starting point. You can read about his specific technique here (http://www.donatoart.com/technique/tech.html ).

Painting. From this point on, it comes down to experimentation. Try different combinations of paint and medium on different surfaces and see what feel right. Look up your favorite artists and find out how they work.

Here are a few additional tidbits.

It is very hard to get a large, smooth gradient of color with acrylics, such as a sky. For this purpose, oil paints work better. Some acrylics artists, such as Michael Whelan, use an airbrush for this purpose. If you wish to use acrylics in an airbrush, be sure to read the health warnings on the label first.

So how do you make a transition from one color to another? There are two general approaches to try: blending one wet color into another wet color. Because of the speedy drying time, you will have to extend the drying time with a medium made for that purpose, or work fast, or both. Or you can coat the area with one of the two colors, let it dry, and then paint the second color on top, fading into the first color with more and more medium.

The colors of acrylics change as the paint dries. The value becomes slightly lighter as the water evaporates, so it is more noticeable on dark colors. This makes matching a wet color to a dry color tough! For this reason, when making gradients, it’s a bit easier to work a wet layer of light paint into a dry layer of dark paint.

Just like oils, acrylics will reach a state of dryness where the surface is rubbery and tacky, but not completely dried. But unlike oils, you won’t have to wait a day to see this state; and in fact, you might stumble into it quite by accident the first few times. Poke the surface gently with a clean, dry finger if you can’t yet tell by eye if the paint is in this state. If it is tacky, don’t mess with it. This is particularly important if you are working with thick layers of paint. Try to paint on top of it at this stage, or worse, try to push the paint around with your brush, and you’ll tear the surface, leaving unsightly lumps and exposure of lower layers of paint. Either leave it alone for a while, or point a hair dryer at it to speed the drying.

One annoyance that strikes beginners is too-wet brushes. You may find that in the middle of painting a careful line, suddenly a fat drop of water comes rolling down the paintbrush and onto your painting, where it causes mayhem. Prevent this by wiping excess water off of the brush with a rag before dipping the brush in paint.

I find that after dipping my brush in paint, I like to immediately wipe off the extra paint onto a scrap to prevent a glob of paint from squishing out sideways from beneath the paintbrush. I often find myself going through quick successions of dip, wipe, paint, wipe, swish, dry, repeat. All of that can be for as little as a single mark on the canvas. But if the paint keeps flowing off the brush the way I want, I’ll put off swishing the brush until the paint just begins to dry out on the bristles.

There is nothing that says you have to use brushes, by the way. You can paint with a rag, or splatter paint from an old toothbrush, or whatever. You can also use acrylic mediums as glue for collage. Unlike oil, acrylic medium is inert once it dries, so it won’t turn paper yellow over time.

Cleaning up. Pour out your paint water, throw out any paper towels or disposable palettes that are full of paint, wash your brushes, and put away all of your toys. Easy!

[Seedling]

Sorry I was so late getting the above put together. Thank you Chris Benett for helping me with this!

For fun, here is a picture of my acrylics “studio” a few years ago. I had only the floor of my living-room to work in at the time. All of my supplies could be packed up into one box (which doubled as a coffee-table), and I worked sitting on the floor with a drop-cloth under my paintings.

The larger painting in the image was actually painted on my mother’s dining room table.

[Qitsune]

Great post Seedling!
A few more tips:
Windsor and Newton brush restorer (http://www.dickblick.com/zz057/06/) works, so if you managed to get your brushes stiff, all is not lost. I had completely hard brushes brought back to life, (it needs to soak more than 24 h for acrylics and it will strip the paint off your handle so be careful.)

If you drop acrylics on your clothes, wash them right away in the sink, this usually works well but acrylics dry fast so you better be fast too. Since acrylics tends to stick to clothes, you can actually use them to paint t-shirts or jeans, use the more liquid type over the heavy body typewhich tends to peel, you can use an iron to set but I usually don't bother.

Also matte medium should be used as a varnish when you have finished your painting not as a mixing medium, it changes the colors you mix it with (it's milky but dries clear) much more than glossy varnish/medium would. I've also tried using impasto paste as a medium (I don't like the medium running off my palette) but it has the same draw back.

I also use clothepins to prevent my brushes from resting on the britles when they are soaking for a while, I've seen specially made containers with a spring (http://www.dickblick.com/zz069/20/)you stick your brushes in.

[MidgardSerpent]

Another basic student set is the Double Primary palette:

cadmium yellow
lemon yellow
cadmium red
alizarin crimson
ultramarine blue
cobalt blue
white

This gives a palette with a “warm” and a “cool” version of each primary color.

1
So, if I get this right:

cadmium yellow = warm yellow
lemon yellow = cool yellow
cadmium red = warm red
alizarin crimson = cool red
ultramarine blue = warm blue
cobalt blue = cool blue
white

2
How about these colors:
vermillion red = a cool/warm red?
yellow ochre = cool/warm yellow?
How about burnt umber and burnt sienna, where do they fall temperature wise?

3
And [example] the coolest yellow is still warmer than the warmest blue, right?

[drd]

Wow Seedling, a great, in-depth explanation of acrylics. I got your pm, thanks for doing all of this, it really means a lot to me, even though I'm using oils now :S

[Favila]

I was planning to start painting with the arrival of 2008, and I was thinking about acrylics. So this will be very useful. Thank you very much seedling!

[darkcult]

Great thread!
Quick question:
Is there any solid video tutorials (acrylic or oils) online or offline?

D.

[Qitsune]

Well for oils there's Shawn Barber's DVD. A good part of it is transferable to acrylics since the choices one makes about composition, colors, draftmanship are the same.

[Vermis]

Excellent topic and post. :)

Liquitex... Cryla...

I've asked this before, but I think I might have more success on this thread.
I recently gave up my old System 3 collection for something more 'artist's quality', and I settled on Chroma's 'revolutionary' Atelier Interactive (http://www.chromaonline.com/chroma/products/atelier_interactive). I haven't used them enough to get much of an impression (beyond the suspicion that they're not as revolutionary as I thought. But then I haven't tried anything 'big' with them, and I was pleasantly surprised that touch-dry blobs of paint on the palette completely revitalised overnight, following a generous squirt of water. But I digress). Has anyone else here used them, and what are the opinions?

Another option is a “wet palette” – a device in which the paints essentially sit on top of a wet sponge. I haven’t tried wet palettes myself.

I have one of the commercial versions, that I only use from time to time. In my limited experience I'd say the trick is getting the amount of water right. Too dry and too wet cause obvious problems.
I've seen a few tutorials for wet palettes, and the basics are the same and pretty simple: a covered container (e.g. a tray over another tray), an absorbent layer (a couple of sheets of blotting paper, paper towels, a disposable cleaning cloth or sponge sheet), and a semipermeable membrane (a couple of layers of greaseproof paper or baking parchment). The aim is that the paints don't some in contact with the wet, absorbent layer, but that water can feed through the membrane to keep the paint moist.
But I've started keeping a plant mister on my painting table too, since switching brands (first time I heard of using one, for painting), and I'd say the use of either method probably boils down to personal preference. :teeth:

[Chris Bennett]

Vermis: Try Liquitex, even a smallish blob of that on the palette stays usable for 3 or 4 hours - if you use a mist spray or just a drop of water to settle onto it and spread over it every two hours it will stay usable the whole day.

[Vermis]

Ah, but I've already invested in Atelier Int., and I can do the same. ;)
Mind you, I have a feeling I might have to abandon scumbling or even blending. Dry (touch-dry?) underlayers scrub and wash off far too easily, leaving bare canvas peeking through. I might yet switch brands again, but I hope it's merely part of a learning curve.
That's an example of why I'm eager to hear the opinions of more experienced painters and non-Chroma-employees who have used Atelier Interactive. I've asked on a couple of forums (though not all I know of), and so far it looks like I'm the only person in internetland who uses it.

EDIT: I've had a more extensive look around 'internetland' for tips for this stuff and it looks I'm going to have to start using media with my acrylics. Instead of just overwatering them. :dur:

[Chris Bennett]

OK, here is the acrylic palette in my studio. As you can see I'm very good about not getting paint anywhere other than where it is supposed to be. I even prepare gessoed boards in this studio!
Everything is self explanatory really: The water spray mister is down on the floor, the big tub of water with the brushes just sitting in them as Seedling mentioned, the mixing board with the paint left to dry (a chance to see how it relates to the painting on the easel), Liqitex colours.
Last but not least my wife's best dressing gown on the floor for wiping the brushes on.

[doonboy]

Cool, I love seeing studio photos!
Since this has become a tip thread..here's one I've learned over the years. If your mixing palette has sides (like a tupperware tray) rather than just being a flat surface, the paint will remain wet longer, no cross ventilation I guess.
Hey Chris, is that a Golden Compass painting in the background with the Polar bear???

[john.red]

Great thread!
Quick question:
Is there any solid video tutorials (acrylic or oils) online or offline?

D.

Bob Kato has some DVDs in which he paints portraits in gouache. From the bits I've seen so far he seems to use it opaguely so it could be helpful in learning acrylics too. Here's the link:

http://www.neeshu.com/Graphics/-Drawing-and-Painting-the-Adult-Male-Head-with-Bob-Kato-vol.1-3.html

If you're a student you can get them cheaper at the Academic Superstore:
http://www.academicsuperstore.com/market/marketdisp.html?PartNo=858269&qk_srch=bob+kato

[Chris Bennett]

Hey Chris, is that a Golden Compass painting in the background with the Polar bear???

Yes, that's right. It's the one I posted up on the Finally Finished thread a month or so back - 'Lyra Rides the Bear'.

[Andrew]

I wouldn't consider acrylics as a lead in to oils. The are two very distinct mediums. Certainly there is some overlap in colour mixing, but they handle so different.

To keep my paints workable, I use a Masterson's palette keeper, lined with a pane of glass. I place my paints on moist paper towels. With occasional misting I keep my paints workable for weeks. I rarely use mediums, except for water.

To blend large areas wet into wet I roughly mix the colours (so they are mottled) and darker than I need. I wet the area on the support that I am painting with water (usually the dirty crap from the rinse bucket to grey off the chroma), then I cover the area thickly with acrylic gesso or white paint. Then I load (or double or triple load) my brush and work in each color dark to light, then using broad, light cross strokes feather the colours into each other.

Acrylics do tend to dry darker. But the higher quality brands, and thus the higher pigment load, the less true that becomes. But a few quick monochromatic paintings to get a handle on the value changes and you will get a good eye on what to look for in value changes.

There are a few really good books on acrylics. "60 Minuets to better painting: Sharpen your skills in Oil and Acrylic" By Craig Nelson, "The Acrylics Book: Materials and Techniques for Today's Artist" by Barclay Sheaks, are two that I really like. If you are into a good search of used and OOP. Then there are several watermedia books by Rudy de Reyna, that have solid info on acrylics. I also like "Masterclass in Watermedia" by Edward Betts. It is geared more to watercolour and gouache and abstraction, but it has some good applications toward acrylics as well. Wildlife painter Terry Isaacs, who also uses acrylics, has a good book out, but I can't recall the title at the moment.

For me, the hardest part, expecially after coming back from oils, is controlling the chroma. Oils naturally have a lovely lush earthy quality about them. It takes me a trials when I get back to acrylics to tone them down a bit.

Andrew

[Serpian]

http://www.adriansmith.co.uk/gallery/index.html

All of THAT is acrylics.

So.. it might be a stepping stone to oils... Or it might not.


http://www.adriansmith.co.uk/images/fullsize/c_as_1009.jpg The first time I saw this one (as a giant poster shipped with my White Dwarf) it blew me away forever! Now where have I put it...

[Sepulverture]

Since other people were posting their acrylic studies here, I thought I would go ahead and do so as well. If anyone has any suggestions or critiques that would be cool.

[PeggyChung]

3 inch acrylic studies from pictures, gonna plein air soon!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/ladylioness/Life%20Sketches/2-11-08a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/ladylioness/Life%20Sketches/2-11-08b.jpg

[Oxide-0]

Ive done a little work with acrylic so ill post a few of mine step by step maybe it will be handy to you guys, all of these were done with pictures and heavily referenced. Can any one venture a guess as to who's quarters this painting was reproduced from?

If any one is interested in how i did anything feel free to message me i can give a more complex run through.

[Oxide-0]

This ones done from a picture taken in Ireland Boncotty I believe the place was. I never did take photos of the first few steps but there the same as above.

1 Sketch in your drawing and use "liquid latex" to cover important parts (once it dries you paint over it freely and remove both easily later).

2 Then work from the background to the foreground, So place your sky and complete it.

3 Continue working forward you can block in the basic colors the grass, rocks & dirt. complete anything that the trees/garden/house will cover.

4 Place your trees over the grass, rocks, sky ect.

5 Once the trees are mostly completed remove the latex and begin work on the stone house and garden ( this is where the pictures begin )

6 Finish up details and stick on your name (lol never did get a final pic of this ill have to drop over to the owners house and take a final photo for the portfolio)

[realextension]

great guide Seedling, thanks.

also a very good guide I found here: http://www.liquitex.com/resources/2003AcrylicBook.pdf

[PenDiablo]

Heyy I've been waiting for an Acrylics thread for aaaaaages ^+^ mind if I post some stuff here?? I only have 4 things in acrylic at the moment

[Acki]

A tip: when doing blends in a feathered semi-drybrushed manner, you get smoother results working from dark to light.

How do I perform that?

I watched a video of craola. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhdhz-ibb0A&feature=related

extactly 2:50 he puts color on the to and just blends it perfectly in. I tried that. I failed. What did he do? I guess that the layer, on whick he put the color to blen it, was still wet? The brush was nearly dry I guess?

And, what did he put on the canvas at the beginning at 0:28?

cheers acki

[Elwell]

extactly 2:50 he puts color on the to and just blends it perfectly in. I tried that. I failed. What did he do? I guess that the layer, on whick he put the color to blen it, was still wet? The brush was nearly dry I guess?It looks like he's just putting down a blob of very thin, watery paint and quickly blending it out to form a subtle glaze.

And, what did he put on the canvas at the beginning at 0:28?Most likely he's coating the board with acrylic medium (probably matte) to seal in the drawing and provide a less absorbent surface (better for wet-in-wet blending).