If you attempt to apply thick pigments of acrylic, you will find that these paints have somewhat plastic texture (being synthetic) and become glue-like, making it quite frustrating to use. This happens usually while creating skin tones in acrylic portrait paintings. Instead work around by treating the acrylic as the water-based medium (that it is), patiently building up several thin layers of subtle colors.
In Focus: Bagley Class Explores The Versatility Of Acrylics
You’ve seen watercolor and probably oil on canvas, but did you know you could get all those same effects just by investing in some acrylic paint?
“Whatever you can create with any other medium, you can get the same look with acrylic, but it’s much easier, I think,” says Pamela Edevold, an artist and the instructor of the acrylics class in Bagley.
Edevold has been painting since she was a little girl. She started doing portraits in high school and never looked back.
“I love anything with eyes – animals, people. That’s the first thing I paint because I like them to look at me or at least be alive while I’m painting,” says Edevold.
Edevold decided to teach a class on acrylics to let people know how versatile and forgiving the medium can be.
She says, “Acrylic was created in the 50s, so it’s not very old and it’s making a lot of progress; especially in the last few years, it’s come a long way, so it’s really becoming an accepted medium now and you can do so much with it.”
It doesn’t take much to create a masterpiece. Edevold says you should start with a running faucet of water. Then, add the three primary paint colors plus white. You can even get cheap brushes.
“You don’t want to use your most expensive brushes with acrylics because they get beat up pretty fast,” says Edevold. She adds, “You don’t need to buy a whole lot of mediums or anything to start with. You only need water.”
Once you have your materials, you can get creative.
“Some of them have beads in them; some have glass. There’s metallics. There’s all kinds of different looks you can get by using the different mediums. You can use them in collages and to create three-dimensional works. So, there’s a lot of things beyond just the tubes of paint that you can do with them. It’s really your imagination that really the one thing that’s holding you back,” says Edevold.
Today, the participants in Edevold’s class were taught techniques in making clouds. Next week will be a barn, then they’ll eventually move on to people and fur.
It’s too late to sign up for this acrylics session, but other classes in Bagley can be found on the Bagley Area Arts Collaborative Facebook page here.
“There’s a jewelry class coming up. There’s a watercolor class,” says Edevold, “and there will be more this fall that aren’t listed yet, but there’s more coming.”
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Paintbrushes
Firstly, let’s get familiar with the key paint brush shapes and sizes that will be useful while painting with acrylics, and also explore what purpose (technique and levels of details) each serves the best.
- Flat or rectangular paintbrushes have square and quite flexible ends and are capable of holding a lot of paint. If used flat, they can help you make long strokes, and are considered an excellent option for blending acrylics and covering large areas in paints. For more delicate lines and small touches, you can use its tip and sides.
- Brushes that have a large belly and tapers to a fine point are called round and pointed brushes. They are ideal for making bold strokes over large areas, however, can also be used to render fine lines and details in the artwork.
- Paintbrushes are usually available in three different sizes — mid-size brushes are best suited for versatility, small-size brushes are good for doing detail work, while large-sized ones are used for painting larger portions and washes.
Unlike oil or watercolor, paint brushes used for acrylic painting are made from synthetic materials. This has less to do with morality, it’s only that synthetic bristles cope well with the resin of acrylic, and can easily sit in water.
While setting up your kit for acrylic artworks —portrait, landscape or abstract paintings, make sure that you have a good variety of paint brushes — from small to large. If you are a beginner, you will find the mid-sized flat and mid-sized round brushes most useful. However, as your skills will broaden and you get hold of techniques, you will find which brushes you are most comfortable with and will easily learn to put almost every brush type to its best use.
Know Your Paints
There are a myriad of acrylic paints available in the market, the techniques and surfaces you plan to put to use will decide the type of acrylic that’s best for you. To begin with, you can choose from professional and artist-grade acrylics that come in many different formulas with different properties and applications. However, don’t limit yourselves, make sure that you experiment with a variety of types and brands to see which one you enjoy painting the most.
Acrylic paints are generally categorized according to their thickness often referred to as ‘body’. Unlike other painting mediums, consistency is no indication of quality for acrylics, here are some most commonly used types of acrylics:
- Heavy Body paints are the thickest and heaviest acrylics and the most popular too. They have a smooth buttery texture, and when it comes to handling and rendering brush marks and gestures, they seem closest to oil paints. They work best on rougher canvases, where they hold on their own. So, if you are planning your acrylic portrait painting on rough canvas, heavy body paints are your go-to acrylics.
- Soft Body paints are also smoother acrylics with a consistency similar to that of yogurt. This property of soft body acrylics makes them ideal for mixing with other painting mediums, wherein it is capable of retaining enough thickness to be painted smoothly as well as responsively.
- Fluid acrylic paints resemble the texture of double cream. Usually sold packed in a bottle, they are perfect for rendering smooth brushing or giving staining effects to your abstract paintings. Many seasoned artists use it for glazes and adding finely detailed work.
- Acrylic Ink is made of super-fine pigments in an ultra-modern suspension of acrylic emulsion which is flowy as water. The most fluid of the acrylic paints, you can use an airbrush, pen, or brush to apply it on the painting surface. These inks are intensely colored and render a soft glossy finish on drying.
- Open paints are acrylics that have extended drying time. This is what makes it easy to use for painting wet-into-wet or blending color to create different tones. They’re great for you if you are looking to incorporate techniques that are possible only with oil paints in your acrylic portrait paintings.
- Interactive acrylics are the ones which the regular fast-drying artist-grade paints, however, now within the range there are those formulated with a unique ‘unlocking formula’ — a liquid is provided that can re-wet the dried interactive acrylic paint and can even slow its drying on adding a few drops the wet paint. When the painting is finished completely, the layer of the final paint applied can be sealed using a fast-medium/fixer making it no longer unlockable.
- Acrylic Gouache is a creamy paint with a velvety matt finish. However, unlike regular gouache (opaque watercolor), these are not rewettable once dry. As this paint levels brush marks, it is quite popular among illustrators. They are great for you if you are looking to paint blocks of flat color in your work.
- Acrylic Markers are perfect for you if you are looking to combine painting and drawing techniques in your acrylic painting. Supplied as bright, bold, marker pens, acrylic markers are formulated to be high covering with quick-drying time. Also, these are water and abrasion proof and adhere to most surfaces, ranging from paper to metal, and can easily make their mark even on brightly colored or painted surfaces.
- Acrylic Spray paint lets you apply thin layers of bold color onto a wide range of different surfaces.
Mixing The Acrylics
As we all know that mixing colors is a precise process and a familiarity with the color wheel will help you mix very specific hues as you work. For instance, combining red and yellow in different quantities will give you a variety of oranges. Adding in some greens will give you subtle brown and other burnt umbers. While mixing acrylics, go for using a palette knife, a plastic knife, or even a paintbrush. Remember to mix thoroughly and also keep in mind that there are some colors that look a slight shade darker when dry, so decide accordingly.
It is well-known that acrylics dry quickly and sometimes pretty too quickly. So, it is essential that you know how to keep them moist so that you can paint properly.
The easiest way to keep acrylic paints moist is to mist them with water, you can even use plant misters or spray bottles which can be bought from any hardware or gardening shops. Depending on what surface you have chosen for your artwork, you can even water your acrylic paints down by mixing more water so that it almost resembles watercolor. This proves to be a valuable trick while quickly laying in an underpainting.
