Just wanted to add some of my own tips for painting with acrylics - lots come from a previous tutor of mine. Sorry it’s a bit of an essay, I just really like talking about paint!
- With mixing, it helps if you give yourself a large palette (our class was told as large as the format you’re working to, if you can.) I generally use two A4 sheets of plastic, or an old dinner plate. You can get stay-wet palettes with a lid and sheet of blotting paper to keep the paint moist between sessions, but equally you could throw a measure of cling-film over a plate.
- Try to put out small quantities of paint; you can always add more.
- On this note, when mixing a tint, move tiny amounts of colour into your portion of white rather than adding white to a pool of colour - you wouldn’t believe how much white paint I’ve wasted over the years!
- You can get retardants to slow the drying speed of acrylics (or I’m given to understand that artist quality brands like Golden have a longer drying time), if you’re looking for a more blended effect, but sometimes just letting brushstrokes dry and stay visible can add to the sense of a painting as a painting (I personally had a growth spurt when I realised this.)
- Try painting with a limited palette. Just in terms of mixing colour, this is really healthy practice, because it shows you the scope you can get out of a small selection (like the earth palette: ultramarine blue, yellow ochre, burnt umber, plus white). Another great piece of advice from our tutor: mix a tone up on your palette, then look at your picture to see where you can apply it (instead of trying to mix a tone for a specific area.) Really push a few colours as far as you can!
- Try laying down a mid-tone background to paint on, rather than directly on to the white of the paper.
- Black should be used carefully; it deadens colours. To make a colour more subdued, mix its complementary and add a bit of that to it instead. Sparingly using Payne’s Grey (which is a bit more blue than black) is another alternative.
- Experiment - a lot. Try painting with a dry brush technique, scumbling the colours to achieve blending effects. Use diluted paint on thick areas. Paint with palette knives and add details with brushes. I found some pretty mad but pleasing effects when I started using inks on top of acrylics. (Then if you paint white acrylic on top of the inks, it comes through, and you get pastel tints of the colour!)
- And I can’t repeat enough what Jedipanda said about looking after your brushes. Acrylic kills brushes, and I’ve always found myself relying on nondescript synthetics which hold their shape surprisingly well and clean up nicely too.
