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Overusing Acrylics?
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Message
Posted
Hi, my trouble is I fiddle. I'm trying to learn when to stop. I end up with too much paint in the canvas, so I have a plastic film, and any more paint just slips around and doesn't sink in. Once dry acrylic is permanent. I've tried adding gesso over the top but then I've lost the feel of the canvas. Can anyone offer any advice or should I just destroy, start again and stop fiddling.
Posted
I don't have any useful advice Amanda, just letting you know you're not alone. I end up destroying those of mine where I know that I can't recycle the canvas. I find I can usually recycle it once, blitzing the offending image with titanium white. That might work better for you than gesso? I've read articles where an artist has described how they paint over the top of a painting that isn't working, without whiting it out.
Posted
Acrylic paint will adhere to acrylic paint, so long as you let it dry properly. Sounds to me as if you're just working too fast and getting impatient.
(Not using Interactives, are you? That would present different issues.)
If you want to paint out your first efforts, then a thinnish coat of "gesso", or Titanium White, would be adequate: you don't really need to make the previous work totally invisible, and as suggested, some artists incorporate bits of the original, failed painting into the final product anyway. So long as you can more or less see what you're doing, you don't need to so clog the canvas with primer or other colour that you lose the weave. This was what happened to me when I used an Ampersand board for an acrylic - it doesn't have a weave at all, and I hated it with acrylic (one had worked very well with an oil painting) because it wasn't compatible with the way I've got used to working. I'll try it again, perhaps, when I've got over the frustration - by changing my technique. Acrylic does seem to appreciate a strong weave, I agree. Some brands also take well to rough watercolour paper.
You could try sanding the paint back down to the weave of the canvas - I'm not sure I'd want to do that, because we are dealing with a plastic here, and it tends to leave strips of paint on the surface which are a pain to deal with - they show up as lumps and marks where you don't want them. Still, might be an answer. On the whole, I'd suggest building up layers slowly and thoughtfully; let them dry out, then, just as thoughtfully, come back and lay the next layer. Or you can dash into it and finish the painting from bottom layer to top in one go - but if you do that, don't pause to fiddle with detail on the way - get the broad shapes, and leave it. You can always come back later and attend to the fiddly bits - when you have a dry surface to work on.
Posted
When I first read this I kind of scratched my head wondering what the problem was. Now I think I have a little bit of an insight.
It seems that acrylics dry very much slower on surfaces that have no porosity. I have prepared a sheet of copper to paint on by "keying" the surface with emery paper and giving several thin coats of titanium white and it was still tacky some time later. Thankfully I only paint quite flat so I don't anticipate the kind of problems you have but I can imagine now what you mean by "slipping around" as the paint doesn't cover as well with nothing to grip your brush seems to move it around the surface.
Posted
Interactives can be re-wetted - unlike ordinary acrylic, which, given time, dries very hard (actually, it remains somewhat porous, which is why it's a good idea to varnish acrylics, but your actual experience will be that the paint once dry is very, very dry and you can't re-wet it; though you can of course paint over it). I don't use interactives, because I don't want an acrylic I can reactivate - it's said to help with blending, but I don't have a lot of problem with that any more). I believe there are ways of ensuring that the interactive does dry hard when you're ready to call it a day, but of course if you were to come back to a painting you can re-wet, that could be a cause of slipping all over the place. There are several YouTube demos of Interactive acrylic which you might find interesting, and I'm struggling to remember the names of the artists associated with it - Fraser something (Scarfe?) is a young artist who uses it and has had demos on YouTube and on the Drawing and Painting Channel; and the late Mitch Waite's videos were still on YouTube when I last looked, which was around 6 months ago. Some people love them - some, who have been used to conventional acrylics, have found them next to impossible to get used to.
It's just a very different paint, which responds entirely differently to the paint we've been talking about here - I see Syd and I agree on this (always a good sign, eh...?): if conventional acrylic paint is slippery, or lifts between coats, it just hasn't dried thoroughly.
(There's yet another issue with some canvases, which I've mentioned before - the cheaper boards (actually, rather than stretched canvas) imported from India, especially, are perfectly good but are often treated with a fungicide, which you can see if you hold the board up to a light - it glistens in the weave. That can cause paint to slip even if it ought to be dry and safe to paint on. So if you find this is happening, wash the board with lukewarm water, take a nail-brush to it until all the shine has gone, and it's probably a good idea to apply your own coat of acrylic 'gesso' when it's dried right out.)
If there are any users of Interactives out there, your contribution would be very welcome.
Posted
It would be interesting to hear from the original poster on the nature of the slipperiness she describes. Having just applied three coats in order to get an even covering (Ultramarine blue and white mixed applied on top of 4 layers of titanium white) I don't think the issue is whether the paint is dry. I believe she is referring to the lack of texture for the paint to grip.
In my case I am just going to be very patient and try to build by applying a little here and a little there over days and weeks (this is working on copper) if I was getting this phenomenon on canvas I think I would throw it away and get a new one out since I would consider the extra time more valuable than the canvas.
Posted
You may be right, DBz - though she mentioned canvas. Provided canvas is of good quality, and not under-primed and too absorbent, but also not shiny or greasy, acrylic should work well with it (stretched canvas is a better support for acrylic than it is for oil paint, too). I think we could do with a little more information - eg, canvas, canvas board? How primed? Who made it?
Posted
The paint won't jump off the surface of its own accord ^^
Acrylics will stick (The correct acrylics will stick pretty well) I am using Daler Rowney and I think these will stick enough to finish the work and then if it is good I will frame it and if it is bad I will peel it off and start again. I thought it sensible to sand the surface so there was no oxidization and something for the paint to grip... it is surprising how the paint behaves though on a surface so smooth, I had anticipated it would be a pleasure to paint on but its when you try this you realise how much the paint reacts to having texture and porousity to grip into. On a smooth surface the brush drags the paint around while wet which means it takes several applications to get an opaque covering. A better artist than I might know how to use this for their own advantage by layering different colours.
Posted
Thank-you for your very comprehensive reply Robert. Coincidentally I have Fraser Scarfe's book out from the library at present, will now look for his videos. I didn't know that interactives were quite a different paint as I've never tried rewetting them once dry. Just use them the way I do my other acrylics, and find that they do dry hard in about the same time. And at present, with temperatures 30 deg C plus, drying is the least of my problems!
Posted
Why indeed paint on copper, I suppose because it is a throwback to the 16th century tradition of miniature portraiture and because only by trying things we haven't done before can we make discoveries. They do seem compatible even if not perfect bedfellows, and you probably know that from cleaning a palette that somebody mixed acrylic on.
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