by Trisha Church

Created on: May 28, 2009

Understanding Acrylic Painting Mediums

When you begin to understand how acrylic mediums work, you will better understand how to use acrylic paints.

A lot of painters started off working in oils, as I did, and really liked the look and feel of the brush strokes and the rich velvety colors and "fatty" feeling of the paint as the palette knife blends and strokes the colors. . . mmmmmm!

And secretly, we are pleased to be counted in the noble lineage of artists, stretching back to the times of the venerable masters - Rembrandt, Renoir, Turner, da Vinci -they all loved their oils - how could we do less! And why would we want to start up with some comparatively new art medium? Plastics! That's what they are! Harrumph! Acrylics indeed!

Eventually, however, many of us get tired of the turpentine clean-up, the fumes, the brushes to clean, the long drying time. For whatever reason, we find ourselves thinking "I wonder if acrylic paints could mimic the effects of oils?

I admit to thinking that same thing and so I tried the acrylics and didn't like the fact they dried so fast, and I couldn't blend colors on the canvas as smoothly as I could in oils. I was generally displeased with the results and so I went back to oils.

Then I started playing with gouache watercolor paints one day and decided to use an acrylic medium with them instead of water. I mixed Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid into the gouache paint and applied it to the canvas. Lo and behold, the drying time was plenty long enough for me to blend and make changes and the colors flowed together smoothly.

I finally let go of trying to make acrylics act like oils, and began to see this medium for its own true nature. It's plastic. And it's exploration time.

Let's examine the acrylic mediums/gels, as they seem to be the least understood and explored. Most of the acrylic mediums I speak about here, will come in a matte, gloss or a semi-gloss (satin) finish. You can mix the matte and the gloss to make your own satin finish. In my painting I usually work with the matte medium until I reach the final coats of paint and then I use a satin finish to have a soft sheen. With acrylic paints, I think the matte surface will make for a better adhesion between layers.

Following, is a list of the various mediums and their uses:

Acrylic Glazing Medium

I'm starting with this one because I consider it to be a staple of my studio set-up. You can use water with acrylics but too much of it will separate the pigment

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