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Acrylic Mediums
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Posted
There's a huge variety of things you can add to acrylic paint, and as Marjorie says, the Jackson's website has a vast range - Jackson's also point out, in their very useful acrylic catalogue which they'll send you if you order from them and ask for it, that there's much advice on YouTube.
Remember always though - and I say this as one who very rarely uses additional mediums - that just the brand and type of paint you use can produce very different results: e.g., using Cryla heavy-bodied acrylic as well as, e.g., System 3 - both produced by Daler Rowney - will give you textural and impasto effects; you can add texture paste as well: some people have even used polyfilla... don't know that I'd recommend it, but it's just an example of what you can add to the paint, the one thing to be wary of being not to weaken its adhesion to the support or binding whatever you add to it into the paint film inadequately. Look out for Wendy Jelbert - she's used all sorts of things, including broken eggshells, in her paintings.
Posted
It's good to use quite a bit of medium to produce a "wash" for an underpainting, just to get rid of the white.
Also it is good to use it in producing a glaze, where you want to subtly change the colour or paint over an underpainting in shades of grey.
You can also use a gloss medium to change the surface texture.
Similarly you can just add sand or anything else to the medium to change the surface, before you paint colours on top.
there seems to be a fashion for pouring thick gloss all over a painting once it is finished! The world is your lobster, play away.
Posted
You're referring I suppose to John Myatt, an art forger who spent some time in prison having mixed acrylic paints with KY jelly to deceive alleged experts that his paintings were oils by Monet and others: a deception that lasted as long as it took people to actually analyse his work. As a means of creating paintings that look superficially like old oils, I daresay it has its place, but I can't think why anyone would want to do that other than to deceive - as a way of producing paintings.... well, KY jelly is, I believe, water based; so presumably it would work with acrylics. I wonder what the long-term outcome would be..... Not that I'm intending to try it: I think, if I were you, I'd stick to acrylic mediums designed for the purpose and avoid foreign bodies of any description.