Thank you for your report!
We have received your report and it is currently under investigation by a forum moderator.
Acylics Starter Pack
Welcome to the forum.
Here you can discuss all things art with like-minded artists, join regular painting challenges, ask questions, buy and sell art materials and much more.
Make sure you sign in or register to join the discussions.
Hang on Studio Wall
This is a Studio member-only feature!
Join our Studio membership and save your favourite Painters Online content, from gallery artwork to step-by-step guides, to your own online mood boards. Create your go-to place for inspiration and learning. Plus, members can also enjoy a range of exciting features including monthly art videos and a digital magazine library.
If you are already a Studio member, simply login to your account.
Not a Studio member? Why not try our free 30-day trial - no commitment, no credit card required
Message
Posted
Re. colours, we all have our favoured ones. What media do you normally paint, Alan? Generally, I find that pigments in oils and acrylics behave in much the same way as each other. Watercolours seem to differ somewhat. Nonetheless, if you get hold of colours in acrylics that you've used in another media, that's one less thing to concern you.
Acrylics do seem to come in every colour you can think of and several that you were very unlikely to have thought of, ever.
Posted
Had a look - mmm. Well. There are several variants here - one contains Sap Green, another a colour they call Emerald; there's the ubiquitous black; and I can't find a set with Burnt Sienna, which is one of my essential colours. The ones I was looking at only have Ultramarine, as well: it's a great colour, although it also has its detractors, but on its own....? I'd prefer a pthalo or cerulean blue hue as well.
I think if I were putting a set together I might exclude black, and the tube greens. But this is a basic selection of colours on which you can build, and for the price - around £15 on the Jackson's and Cass Arts sites - you can't really go wrong. I would certainly buy a set, and gradually add my preferred colours when the bank account stretched that far.
Just one point, though - be aware that these are quite fluid colours - they have excellent colour spread, but if you wanted a "shorter" paint, one with more bulk and body, the Cryla range (also from Daler Rowney - who pioneered acrylic paint in the UK) might be more what you were after. And - you probably know this - you can mix different ranges and different brands of acrylic quite happily - so you're not restricted to System 3. (Interactives are something else again - I don't know if you can mix those with regular acrylics, but strongly doubt it.)
Posted
Hi, yes I would consider myself a "newbie", having taking painting up exactly twelve months ago next week. Advice would be welcome, especially on acrylics, and the essential tools required. Up to now any knowledge I happened to have gained is from my local library and some Internet information along with the magazines, 'artist' and 'leisure painter'. The vast majority of the books in my local library are watercolour or oils , with very little on acrylics. The first mistake I made was asking family for painting equipment for Christmas, and ended up with loads of tiny cheap brushes and very sub standard paint. I'm still using 'graduate' paint, at a reasonable cost. One question I would like answering concerning paints is ....'if I upgrade to some artist grade acrylic paints, should I just use that type or is it possible to use.artist and cheaper paints together,or would there be problems with the likes of blending etc.' Thanks for posting this topic,much appreciated.
Posted
I used to love painting when I was younger, so I bought some acrylics (as lots of people rave about how easy they are to paint with) and so far I have not re-found the love! I have tried 2 different types of acrylics Liquitex basics and Galeria and I've struggled with both. I find that the quality of the liquitex varies from colour to colour and I find the fact that they dry too fast frustrating. I have tried them as washes (more as a water colour), which I did find better, but overall I find them pretty stressful and a rushed experience. I know I can use a retarder, but I've never used this, so any advice generally on the techniques people use on dealing with the fast drying nature or the different types of acrylics will be welocme, as I'm not one to throw the towel in.
I have started a course on animal portraits and in this I have to use oils - which I was dreading as they are often hyped up as being "difficult" and time consuming. So far, I've found these much more fun as I can continue blending and working the paint for a reasonable time.
Posted
Agree with all that's been said (and thanks to Pat for kind remarks). In general, acrylic brands and qualities will mix satisfactorily - I think there was a question a long while ago about a foreign brand: I have a vague memory that Erebus, then cunningly disguised as Meltemi, wasn't impressed with it. But on the whole, no problem. Brushes - I prefer the long-handled ones, with maybe a short handle for certain watercolour-type techniques and fine detail - but that's all it is, preference.
As for buying them - if a pack of brushes contains a long flat, a short flat, a filbert, a round, and a rigger, fan optional, I should go for it. Otherwise, you can put together a good selection of brushes from Rosemary & Co - their Shiraz, Golden, and Ivory ranges are excellent for acrylic, and extremely economical.
Interesting that one up above couldn't find much about acrylic in the shops, the selection being dominated by watercolour and oil .... I sense a gap in the market....
As for the bit that really interests me, the difficulty or otherwise of using acrylics - I would say to start with that if you find you have a feeling for oil and are getting on well with it, there's no obligation to use other types of paint (although I do, and completely understand why people would want to). But there is an assumption that acrylic is somehow easy - and this is highly misleading. It's easy in just one sense: you can overpaint mistakes and no one will be any the wiser. But being able to paint out mistakes doesn't stop you making them in the first place, and avoiding them is a technique which has to be learned.
You can employ acrylics on paper in what might be called a watercolour way - ie, in transparent washes: a few drops of flow improver in the paint will help there; and you can, sneakily or otherwise, use a little opaque paint with this approach - done carefully, it's imperceptible. One of the best brands for this I've ever found is Chromacolour (from Chromacolour UK, sold only from their website). I don't see any good reason why it wouldn't also work with the fluid paints of System3; it would be unlikely to work at all well with Cryla - although if that's what you've got, try it and see. If you can paint in watercolour you can certainly master this technique - the water, any flow improver, or retarder, will help the paint stay wet for a reasonable period of time, but I rarely use retarder and echo Amanda's advice: work quickly. If you've come to acrylic from watercolour, this might be the best starting point for you.
Using acrylic more solidly - like oil, although only very approximately like oil - seems to be the technique people have most trouble with, and that's why the Interactives were invented: they get over the quick drying issue. The thing to remember here, though, is that acrylic is best employed in layers: a painting in acrylic done this way can look quite horribly ghastly for a long while - garish, unnatural: you have to develop the confidence to know that if you keep working on it, adding to it, refining it, glazing, scumbling, it WILL come right in the end. What people often do is reach a stage like that, and give up, thinking they can't improve it; but they could have done if they had persisted. I suspect it's more true of acrylic than of any other medium that a good painting was at one stage an extremely bad painting - it only came round in the end because you persisted.
I've had an article on the stocks with Leisure Painter for quite a while now which explains some of this: perhaps one day it'll get published! (Hallo, Ingrid.....) The "don't fiddle" advice is not necessarily helpful in acrylic, let us put it that way.
Quick drying - the only thing to worry about there is softening hard edges (if you want to) before they dry. For anything else, because acrylic dries, generally, flat you can blend by glazing, or by a modified velatura technique - semi-opaque veils of colour which can be manipulated over dried paint; it really does work just as well as blending with oil paint, if you're not quick enough to do it before the paint dries, it just needs practice. Medium helps.
Posted
'Strewth I go off visiting foreign parts and an acrylic thread has a good meander...
My advice? I don't give it...and I seldom take it...
Just buy a brush "for acrylics"...any brand fits the starter bill.
just buy a few "acrylic paints"...any brand does.
Just buy say some Galeria paper.
Now paint. Find what brushes you like...find what paints suit your needs...make the art.
learn from that attempt and make the next painting better....If the bug bites you will learn things and your acrylic requisites will grow and mature.
Books? the thoughts of some clapped out artist committed to paper.
Posted
I was interested in the starter pack for beginners in acrylics
although I don't profess to be an expert on acrylics
I do like the idea my friend Dave Usher uses ,,.he buys a gallon of pva from a diy store
costs about £8 he thins it down and pops it in a squeezy bottle ,and uses it mixed with plaster of paris to make a textured surface to work on ,also it can be used to prime watercolour paper both sides ,or hard board or similar .
.myself I buy a pot of white that will be handy instead of a tube white.I believe a matison palette /though yes it is expensive is the best one can buy ,it is made of a strong plastic ,and it should last years .also the edges being raised helps this stay wet palette ,,you can a use a paper towel roll, for stay wet.damping. and some butchers paper or greased paper to pop your paints on top,,