The merits of Acrylic

To my friend Meltemi who is a great advocate of Acrylic and who patiently look at and kindly participate to the debates on watercolour.Lets talk acrylic.Acrylic is a medium that I would recommand to all artists.A mistake made can be easily rectified, by painting over it or scrubbing, wiping it (easily done now with the new acrylics) and without to wait for it to dry such as Oil.You can take acrylic outside and come back with your work without being worried how to transport it (not with Oil)You can work on any surface as long as it is not greasy.The choice of vibrancy in colours are fantastic.You can work with paint brushes, shapers, sponges, sticks, fingers, anything.Now comes the fun bit :By putting layers of different colours on top of one another you can achieve incredible results, but each layer must dry before applying the next one.Also by laying the paint with a sponge and coming back with other colours on top of it with a sponge too you can have unpredictable results and never twice the same.You can texture your board or canvas before applying the paint. Put gesso or acrylic paint and you can scratch with anything that will make marks, a comb, twigs, anything. Make shapes like circles, waves, whatever comes to your mind, when it is dried, start painting on top of it. It is a discovery, you will explore a new style that you never knew you had.There are many additive mediums like beads, pumice and more all to be explored.We all know that it can be used in the style of Oil or watercolour.It can be part of mix media and what fun it is. Now we have too acrylic inks, more to be thrown on the paper.It can be part of collage. In the past I have added some dry beans to my collage mixed with acrylic they were glued on the surface and I painted over it. Anything can be achieved all you need is the imagination.Go for it