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I’ve been trying various acrylic medium for creating texture.
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Using a glass bead medium in my paint, what else does everyone use please. Also pearlescent and moon paint.
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This reminds me of model making as a kid... we used to superglue sand or other things and paint over the top, or paint and sprinkle "flock" onto the paint which would stick and look like grass. For me it just looks lumpy on a painting and I have to say I prefer smoothness to a canvass in most cases but if textured the more traditional kind of thing is more my preference. It is good to experiment though and if it creates an effect which you desire then keep exploring. Out of the three the moon paint looks most promising in my opinion BTW.
Posted
Many more of these mediums - or media - in the Jacksons' Acrylic catalogue, through which I am avidly poring over the last few days.
To embed them all successfully, a) keep them to a minimum, b) use plenty of paint. As a matter of personal preference, I prefer to avoid them, as I avoid the use of 'extras' in oil paint and watercolour - eg, I don't like iridescence particularly, or sand, or chalk; I am not very interested in making colours granulate which normally wouldn't; and if I want texture, I apply thicker, opaque, layered paint, rather than mediums which, I think, can become painfully obvious and mannered. But all are free to disagree... and that rhymes, too....
I admire the work of Wendy Jelbert, who embeds eggshells (or at least did) in some of her paintings. But if I see that, I fear my literal mind just screams 'that's an eggshell', and I don't take it seriously from then on.
Perhaps I once had a romantic streak, but I suspect it died, and with it any recourse to additives, chunks of wood, bits of old knicker-leg, much use of gels and thickening agents. And collage, I fear - but I'm still capable of enjoying other people's use of these things, when they come off, which they don't always. Or, I think, often.
Posted
I have used sawdust to good effect—though perhaps Robert and Daveyboyz might not agree. I also acquired—I dismember where from—a tin of gesso powder which can create a very fine texture. I work in very many semitransparent layers so I sprinkle the sawdust/powder very selectively onto wet paint rather than mixing it. The sawdust is a little like porridge at first and like Sylvia I'm impatient so I usually force-dry with a hair dryer and once it has a few more layers over it it's rock hard.
Pictures show immediately after the sawdust application and the finished work.
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No one can really tell you you're wrong, John, because - no one knows what'll happen in future to acrylic paintings. In theory they should last centuries - as they're inert, the sawdust shouldn't react with them, though might with the support: you are a pioneer here! Whether you've produced a work that will still have them gasping in the year 3050, or a conservator's worst nightmare, no one presently knows. All we do know is that some twentieth century multi-media works are causing museums greater problems - crumbling, detaching from the support - than much older paintings. But that's probably got a lot to do with deficiencies in the way they were built up.
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I don't do much work with acrylics, but do occasionally muck around with some abstracts...
This is when I use things like moulding paste or high solid gel gloss. My recent outing with superheavy gesso wasn't too good (re another post here). If working a large-ish canvas, like 60cm (2 feet), it takes a heck of a lot of paint. The gel gloss helps eke it out further and provide some more body, even to a heavy-bodied paint.
I've also used sand....proper stuff.....gave it a thorough wash and agitation, before spreading it out to dry and storing in an empty coffee-jar. Used an old tea-strainer to help sprinkle the sand over wet paint or standard acrylic gesso. This old pic from around 2013 was done on a board using sprinkled sand and wet acrylic paint, followed by a lot of paint-flicking from a toothbrush. The clouds have got some gel in them.
Its size is around 12 x 9 inches (30x24cm).
I've also used that stuff called clear tar gel, which makes long stringy artefacts when you dip a painting knife into it and lift it out, it dribbles all over the place but is controllable (to some extent).
There is a huge range of mediums. I think some of them are more ideal for abstracts than anything else, but it all depends on the user.
Moulding paste was used to form the shape of this rounded thistle-head, it sculpts up nicely and dries firm overnight, on top of which you can then add your paint. I tend to find acrylics more useful for highly decorative images rather than representational work.
The Globe-Thistle painting was done years ago, about 2006....I still have it and have become rather attached to it now
Its size is around 12 x 9 inches (30x24cm).
I've also used that stuff called clear tar gel, which makes long stringy artefacts when you dip a painting knife into it and lift it out, it dribbles all over the place but is controllable (to some extent).
There is a huge range of mediums. I think some of them are more ideal for abstracts than anything else, but it all depends on the user.
Moulding paste was used to form the shape of this rounded thistle-head, it sculpts up nicely and dries firm overnight, on top of which you can then add your paint. I tend to find acrylics more useful for highly decorative images rather than representational work.
The Globe-Thistle painting was done years ago, about 2006....I still have it and have become rather attached to it now