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Chickletts
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Message
Posted
Chickletts (not sure if spelled correctly) is the term I've come across in an American painting book for the tiny spots where acrylic paint doesn't take, and it is something I have problems with. Someone on a very old thread (which I can't find now) said she had this problem with Atelier Interactive paints and wondered whether others did. Atelier probably isn't much used in the UK and no-one came up with a helpful answer. However Atelier is pretty standard here and I have a number of these paints and am finding there are these tiny "holes". Has also happened with W&N's Galeria. Hopefully some of the experts here can tell me what I might be doing wrong, and how to overcome this? There must be some reason. With enough layers they do get filled in but I feel this shouldn't be happening at all. Perhaps I'm not using enough paint in the first layers?
Posted
Is the Liquitex you're using, with which you don't have a problem, a flow formula paint, or at least a 'soft' one, as opposed to heavy body? Acrylic paint - and oil paint - can indeed leave holes on canvas, where the paint hasn't settled into the weave. This will be the more noticeable if you're painting on white canvas, with no preliminary layer of colour. A more liquid paint will tend to avoid these issues.
That's if these "chickletts" of yours appear at the time you're painting. If they appear afterwards, there can be several reasons. One, you've worked the medium up into a froth - which is quite easy to do, with acrylic medium or water - thus creating air bubbles. I once saw a painting in which the artist had clearly done this deliberately, to create a texture, but it's generally not advisable. Two, if there is any suggestion of grease, or fungicidal treatment on imported canvases, causing the paint not to adhere. Although that way, you're more likely to get wholesale delamination, the paint rubbing off the surface, than random holes. Grease can be removed with Iso alcohol; fungicide, which shows as glistening spots in the canvas weave, can be removed with tepid water and a nail brush; and you might want to add your own coat of primer/'gesso' when the canvas is thoroughly dry.
In short though, acrylic paint doesn't flow, for the most part, like oil - the body of the paint can form holes, especially when used thinly. I wouldn't have thought that interactives would be more prone to this than other paint, but then I've never felt any desire to use them.
Posted
Thank-you for your comprehensive and helpful reply Robert. The Liquitex I use is indeed the heavy body one (haven't seen the soft body version stocked here). The chickletts appear at the time of painting. You have given me several ideas to work on, making the paint a bit more liquid to make it flow better, being careful about the way I mix the medium and water, and not applying the paint too thinly. And now I come to think of it, the painting where it is happening more noticeably is the one where I didn't put a preliminary layer of colour - I usually do that so had better go back to doing it. All very helpful.
Posted
Depends on the extent to which it's watered down, and to a considerable extent on the brand of paint - acrylic can take quite a bit of watering down without affecting its adhesion when the water has evaporated. I've been painting with acrylics since ca. 1964, and rarely use anything but water to make it flow. Failure to adhere to canvas can have many reasons, being underbound is one of them, but only one.
Posted
https://www.thoughtco.com/water-and-medium-to-add-to-acrylic-paint-2577388
This is a good article, by Marion Boddy-Evans, on diluting acrylic paint. It makes the useful point that you can use more water on an absorbent surface than on, say, a primed canvas. It's possible to paint with a high-grade acrylic on watercolour paper in such a way that it's difficult, though rarely impossible, to tell the difference between acrylic and watercolour.
You'll know if your paint is underbound - it beads, streaks, doesn't 'take' properly. This is much more likely to happen on a canvas or board than on paper - trial and error will be the best guide.
Posted
I have this occasionally with Daler Rowney Acrylics... I don't use medium but go directly from the tube and it happens when the brush is not fully loaded or if I use it at certain angles to the canvas (when the brush feathers across the texture of the canvass and doesn't deposit the paint between the fibres of the weave) If the paint is more viscous it is less likely to happen I'd wager so if the paint has been drying on your palette it starts to occur more.