You can do more than just brush on acrylic paint! You can also layer colors to get effects like stripes or cool geometric patterns by using painter’s tape. Yup, it’s for more than just painting walls and trim. Start by painting your surface with the lightest color you want to use. Let it dry completely and then section off the piece of the next color you want to use with painter’s tape. You want to use your medium but not darkest shade. Let it dry and repeat the process with your darkest color. You want to do your darkest color last because it will take less coats to cover the lighter colors. It can add a really cool effect to a project! Plus, using the painter’s tape with acrylic paint will let you make some really clean, clear lines.
How to Use Acrylic Paint
Caylin Harris is a crafter, stylist, and writer with over 10 years’ experience creating easy DIY projects. She has created craft and DIY projects for The Pioneer Woman magazine and the “Naturally, Danny Seo” TV show on NBC.
Updated on 10/31/19
Acrylic paint is a huge tool in a crafter/DIY enthusiast’s supply kit. Not only is it available in a stunning range of colors—including fun finishes like glitter and neon, but there are plenty more advantages. Plus, it works so well for a variety of projects. Here’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about acrylic paint, but didn’t think to ask. You’ll be fully prepped to use this craft supply for your next project.
The Benefits of Acrylic Paint
Unlike oil paint, acrylic paint can be removed quickly and easily with just soap and water. It makes cleanup so much easier; it comes off of hands and paintbrushes with just a quick wash. We’ve already mentioned all the cool colors, but it bears repeating. You don’t have to sacrifice anything color-wise for your projects if you want to use acrylic. It also dries much faster than oil paints, allowing you to keep small projects from taking up too much time. One last thing to mention, acrylic paint typically costs less than other types of paints like oils.
How to Use It
You may be thinking that acrylic paint is easy to use, so why not start painting right away? Although it’s a fairly medium to handle, there are some other little tips and tricks that can make the experience and finished project that much better. Since acrylic paint dries so fast it can be a little tricky if you’re painting a large surface. While you do want to paint in one consistent direction, you don’t want to go over your existing paint job and pull-up pieces of semi-dry paint with your brush. It will totally ruin the finish.
When you’re using acrylic paint another thing to keep in mind are your brush strokes, to cut down on their appearance sometimes it’s nice to use a foam brush. Plus, being patient and working in multiple coats to build the finish also helps add to a beautiful final product. While typically acrylic paint can feel dry to the touch in as quick as fifteen minutes depending on the surface, let each coat of paint cure for about an hour before starting on the next layer. Unlike spray paint, it’s also low odor so you can use it inside and won’t need additional equipment like a respirator.
Here are the surfaces that you can paint with acrylic paint: wood, glass, metal, and fabric. Acrylic paint is typically non-toxic and can handle some indoor/outdoor conditions—which is why it works great if you’re painting cute planters or pots.
Basic Tips you need:
- Keep a piece of cloth around at all times to wipe excess water from your brush.
- The most basic acrylic techniques you should begin with are: mixing colors on the palette and the canvas; making gradients of color, impasto, glazing by using thin layers of color, and using the palette knife.
- It dries quickly, so you need to work fast. Sometimes, to achieve an interesting effect, it’s better to wait until it dries.
- There is an almost infinite number of techniques achieved by combining acrylic paint and gel pens, markers, and pastels. Experiment and have fun using different media together.
- Thoroughly wash your paint brushes after using them with acrylics; otherwise, they become ruined and useless.
- To conserve the beauty of your acrylic painting, cover it with a varnish so it doesn’t fade over time due to sun exposure.
New to using Acrylic Paints? Here are 8 Acrylic Paints techniques you need to know.
Splattering:
It doesn’t get more fun than this! Using a fairly wet brush, you can flick or splatter onto a surface for an uneven splatter effect. It’s fantastic for creating an abstract landscape or a starry night or for just adding texture to a piece.
Dabbing:
Think of dabbing like very artistic sponge painting. Using the corner of a sponge or even a piece of paper towel, dab on accents of color. This creates a texture that can’t be replicated with any other applicator.
Oil paint VS Acrylic paint: What’s better for Blending?
Working with acrylic paint products provides versatility, durability, and adhesive qualities but oil paints on the other hand provide flexible blending choices if you want to work on a large piece of art. Oil is the better reliable choice as it retains moisture much longer than acrylic .
Also, when it comes to painting and blending paints, it depends on your preference and how long you want to work with your paint but we can’t deny the fact that oil paints do have a better blending technique compared to acrylic paints.
Let’s get familiar with the paints
Before getting any paint or diving into a new medium, it’s important to understand the aspects of what makes that paint special? Why would you only want to choose it particularly when you have varieties of paint?
In this article, we will come around a few distinctions and properties of both oils and acrylic paints and what makes oil paint a better choice than acrylic paints in terms of blending colours.
What are oil paints?
Oil paint is a type of slowly drying paint that is made up of pigment, binder, and solvent. It consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil as the binder. It is considered one of the most common techniques for artistic painting.
Oil paints are thick, greasy and generally made up of binding agents, color pigments, and an oil basis. Oil paint products provide a smooth and creamy texture that makes them perfect to work with on a variety of surfaces.
What are acrylic paints?
Acrylic paints are water-based colour and have an appealing medium because of their versatility. The paints are composed of pigment particles dispersed in an acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paint serves a variety of purposes and can be the perfect medium for your painting studio.
You can consider using acrylic paint products if you are a beginner and want to learn painting. One of the numerous benefits of painting with acrylic is how easily the paint can be removed while wet, giving the painter room for improvement. Even if the paint started to dry, any spill can be wipe out easily with soapy water, or by using the baby wipes to correct an area and to prevent flaking in acrylic painting in the future, it is important to apply a fixative and sealer to the paint as we know that acrylic paints has quick drying nature.
Oil paints Vs Acrylic paints
There is no doubt that acrylic paints are an excellent medium for beginners. They are certainly less messy and easier to use.
However, oil paints stay wet for a lot longer than acrylic but there are some of the oil mediums that help oil paint to dry a bit faster, like adding a bit of alkaline base oil medium to the paint while others can thicken or thin your paint for different techniques.
Colour blending and Mixing
When it comes to colour blending and mixing with oil paints, the job is easy. A painter can seamlessly produce smooth brush strokes and blending techniques with oil paints. This is not something possible with acrylic paints due to their faster drying time.
Oil paints are simpler to work in terms of colour blending and mixing due to their oil base and fewer binding agents. Oil paints retain moisture easily and glide easily over the surface that provides very easy colour blending opportunities. Using acrylic paint for colour mixing is more difficult, many artists have to spray some water on the canvas to re-wet the paint as it starts to dry out quickly or use a glazing medium to expand the drying time.
Final Thoughts
It is clear that oil paint products come in handy in terms of colour blending. In artistic painting, both oil and acrylic paints have their unique advantage. If you are a beginner and want to try your hand at painting, then acrylic is a more suitable choice as water-based colour can be painted on any surface. At the same time, Oil painting is more appropriate for professional painters as it can be used for creating complex and unique paintings.
