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Pathfinder in the Jungle
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Posted
Looking good! Love the depth of the waterfall, and the leaf detail's working really well.
Stop me if I'm talking nonsense, but you can buy a drying retarding agent for acrylics can't you? Would that be any help? Drying speed was one thing that always put me off acrylics and made me stick to oils, although I use liquin to speed up drying normally (!)
Posted
I use a stay-wet palette, which helps keep the colour workable (better than retarder, which has the drawback Pat mentions); I also use a flow-improver now and then (a few drops in the paint water); and certainly spray the painting - I always keep a little spritzer bottle at my side. Yes, the paint will slide down the canvas if it's wet already - but then if it's wet already you shouldn't need more water. If it removes drying paint, the paint's underbound, or the surface needs de-greasing.
There are interactive acrylics - I'm not sure that they really solve this issue completely: but then, I don't use them. Thoughts from anyone who does?
Oils allow all sorts of effects more easily than acrylics - I don't think that this has anything to do with water-miscibles as opposed to regular oils or alkyds, though: I don't understand why the issue being explored here would be affected by the type of oil paint used (I also think water-miscible oils are trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist, but that's for another day; just thought I'd drop a match in the petrol...... always fun!).
Posted
Well whatever you're doing, the painting looks good - I have trouble painting in this heat too, even though I think it's a shade cooler than it was. I do find the flow improver a better bet than retarder, on the whole - mine is the Daler-Rowney Flow Enhancer: excellent for use with Cryla and System 3 acrylics, and it works with other brands too. (And while I bought it a year ago, so hope they've not changed it, it also came in a nice glass bottle, not the ever-present plastic which I so hate.)