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Thickening Gel for modelling paste?
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Message
Posted
I recently bought some thickening gel for my paints, but I find it difficult to use, is it possible to use this gel for covering the painting surface before starting by mixing it with White acrylic paint? Would this make a suitable surface for painting on or might it crack later..... I have done a bit of an experiment with various surfaces which is still tacky right now but i'm wondering about long term effects?
Posted
There are various products available - gel thickener is one. I doubt that most of them will crack, unless you apply them with too much water or medium (or for that matter too little).
On the whole, though - I don't like any of them, or use them. The answer to most questions about texture is just to use thicker, full-bodied paint. So that'll be Daler=Rowney Cryla, rather than System 3, for example. And apply with a painting knife.
Alwyn Crawshaw did a video on this a long time ago - I forget what he used (and anyway he used it with moderation) but I think it was indeed gel thickener. My advice would be - use thicker paint.
Posted
Ah ha - I shall be looking out for it now, Alan!
But I agree - acrylic paints have come on by huge bounds since I first started using them over 50 years ago; you can use all sorts of things to bulk them up - any of the acrylic paint suppliers' websites will offer you a whole range of products - but with acrylics and with oils, I believe the best results come from using pure paint; you can use PVA glue under acrylics, or even under oils if you want to, but I've never found any need to when the paint itself more than does the job.
If, with acrylic paint, you take a painting knife and slabs of stiff, full-bodied paint, and glaze over it to your heart's content, you'll get fantastic results that I do not believe are readily achievable through any of the short-cuts that are so readily available, and I'd encourage you to use pure paint - just THICK paint - rather than seek chunky substrates as a means of achieving textured effects. Yes, you can achieve results using a basis of PVA glue, or solid applications of texture paste, but paint, in my view, is always better than pastes because it produces subtler results, and just as much texture, especially if you use a knife.
Posted
Thank you all for your advice, Ido use Cryla paints which are lovely and thick but at the moment I am painting in washes, so I want to use the wash method with the thickly painted finish if you know what I mean....So I actually need the blank canvas to have the texture before I start to paint.....The mixture I made earlier dried flat so I may try adding more thickener and less paint, and if that fails i'll just have to buy some modelling paste....
Posted
Yes, thickening gel is for mixing with paint, I just wondered if it could be used in any other way as I wasn't happy with the result when used as it should be, and wondered if it could be use to put a texture on the painting surface, however, I tried this and it definitely doesn't work, I may get round to buying some from Jackson's as advised if other home made methods don't work.