Another book

After a long, long period of wondering whether it would even be worthwhile, I've decided to get on and write another e-book, on Basic Acrylics.  Questions have been asked here that have easy answers, and some have been asked that have more involved answers - I've looked for a simple guide that made sense to me, and have yet to find one; although there are several quite useful books out there.  How can you help?  You can send me huge amounts of money...... no, no.  No, really.  I don't mean that.  (I do, I do....)   You can tell me, if you would, what you really, really wanted to know when you started thinking about painting in acrylics - even, what you're not clear on even today.  I've been painting in acrylics for over 50 years now - I may not be very good (if you could just shout me down and cry "Of course you are, you modest fool!" at this point, it would be appreciated), but I have acquired a huge amount of technical knowledge: more, if I may be frank, than some who have written on this subject in the past.....   Though one hates to brag.  Well, no - you'll have noticed.  Foreign to my nature, it is.  Just not the Jones Way.  Anyway - I do think that acrylic painters find their own way eventually through the thickets of confusion, because it's such a forgiving medium: but I could have done with someone who would have saved me a great deal of experimentation and struggling to my ultimate goal, insofar as I've reached it, and I doubt I'm alone. Assemble those problems and fire them at me.  

That's very useful - I find that when you try to write as a guide to others, you tend to forget the questions that you really wanted to ask decades earlier; very basic questions, which later on one takes for granted.  So thank you for that, it's very helpful. Just one thing, you may know anyway: fat over lean only applies to oil painting - you can layer and trowel the stuff on to your heart's content in acrylic.  

David Hockney on acrylics - it enables glazing (as Linda says, the addition of transparent layers) to an extent and speed not possible before.  It's actually a wonderful medium - and too often relegated to the level of 'pretend oils/watercolours', or some kind of 'easy' substitute for them.  It just ISN'T, and that sort of ignorance makes me SO cross!   Seethe.......... Now: it probably is easier to gain membership of the National Association of Painters in Acrylic, to which I have the honour to belong, than to gain election to the Royal Academy or Royal Institute of Oil Painters or of Watercolour painters.  But that's only because - well OK, mostly because - the RA, RI, ROI etc are fairly ancient institutions, election to which is a very definite honour and award of approbation.  And they have limits, I think, on their total number of members.  As one who has painted in oil and acrylic since his vibrant and puissant youth - all right, all right: since I was young - I can tell you that acrylic painting is NOT easier than oils, and as I discovered when I first tried to paint seriously with watercolour, it's no easier than watercolouring either.  Or at least - it's no easier to do it WELL.  Perhaps we can all get somewhere with a painting if it's just a question of adding layer on layer to a painting until we at least stop it looking like a horror story, car crash, or explosion in a paint factory; and you certainly can't do that in watercolour, and can't really do it in oil either.   But then, you wouldn't want to try, would you?  And acrylic painters don't want to do that either.  Point is, to cut to the chase - if you use acrylic for its own sake, and don't think of it as a quick substitute for 'proper' painting in oils or watercolours, you'll have more fun with it AND achieve better results.  I try to forget about oil and watercolour painting when using acrylics - after all, I don't think about acrylic when painting in oil. I sense I may be running on irrelevantly here - it's beginning to look a bit like an excuse for using acrylics at all, and that's not my intention.  But I think many acrylic painters feel a touch sensitive on this subject - we know our preferred medium (acrylic isn't necessarily mine, by the way) is as 'good' as any other; but the art market tends to discount it in favour of oil (as it's always done with watercolour, unless the results actually knock its eyes out).  SOME things are quicker and easier with acrylic than they are with a slower drying paint, but that's just a matter of time, speed and convenience - nothing to do with the inherent value of the medium. Anyway, I expect that was entirely irrelevant, but I needed to get it off my chest...... 

Oh - does this man ever know when to stop? - layering isn't always just about glazing with transparent colour - in acrylic especially, it's about building the painting up in a mix of transparent and opaque layers, or even in just opaque layers, gaining greater colour depth and texture as you go.  'Layering' - as in hair-dressing - can have several meanings; in fact, I'd suggest that glazing isn't really 'layering' at all - it's, well...... glazing. 

Yes, I do know the answer to that one - because I had the same.  Give the plastic base a clean with Milton's baby fluid, or white vinegar.  Mould being mould will grow wherever it possibly can, but this does help.  I've noted it, for inclusion in the tome, ta!