The quality of acrylic paints and acrylic gels/mediums has improved quite a bit in the past 20 years. This has resulted in a huge increase in the popularity of this medium. The other good news is that they dry really fast and that can also be the bad news. There are ways to work around that, however, and so beginning with the next series of posts, I will discuss how to work with acrylic paint. I will introduce a couple of painting exercises that will demonstrate the difference between working with different viscosities of paint (drippy, thin, and heavy impasto), and what mediums to add to the paint to get these different effects. I will also share recipes for some homemade mediums that achieve the same thing as the expensive art store mediums. Other topics that will be covered: how to set up a work space, basic materials needed to get started, painting supplies (brushes, knives, paint, other mark making tools), stores and other resources for artist’s supplies. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced artist, revisiting the basics can energize and renew the creative process for you. The featured painting in this post was done on 2 inexpensive canvas panels. I used graphite pencil, graphite bar (wet), a homemade drippy paint mix, black and white acrylic and house paint, along with various scraping tools.
Acrylic Painting Process Intro
