Two Questions

If you are diluting the acrylics with water and using it in a style similar to watercolour, then you could use masking solution to keep the highlights white. From what you've written it seems you might be working from photos and transferring the outlines to the canvas. You don't need graph paper. Buy some tracing paper, and use a technique called scaling up. Read this: http://www.art-is-fun.com/grid-method/

If I want to scale up I simply increase the size of the photo/drawing on the computer by splitting it in two or three or whatever and then printing off the sections. Join them together scribble on the back with a 6B graphite stick, place the place the image over the paper/canvas and draw around the outlines. Sounds a bit complicated but actually very simple and so much quicker. Also I find the lines tend to be less precise resulting in a looser painting although they can be crisped up if that's what you prefer. Not something I do on a regular basis but has come in handy in the past.

Go to Jacksons' Arts online and spend time studying the range of accessories - I don't use graph paper, nor do I ever scale up (it might be useful for portraits, but I can't see much other use for it - but if you want a particular gadget or device, someone will have invented it and will willingly sell it to you). Masking fluid - I loathe the stuff even for watercolour, but at least I can see its use there. Unless you're painting transparently all the time, ie using acrylic as watercolour, what would the advantage be of masking fluid as opposed to white paint? The way most people use it at least, acrylic painting is an additive process: you build it up, in layers, or scumbles, or glazes. I might be a bit more inclined to give this further thought if you told us what you're trying to do that you can't do without masking. But the best advice has been given - you CAN use almost anything with acrylic; the one thing you can't do is paint with it over oils. Get a bit of paper or sheet of canvas and just try out these ideas for yourself - or buy a book. I think I've suggested Wendy Jelbert's books and dvds before.

I suppose it could work after a fashion if you used the paint very thinly - but I don't see what would stop that acrylic polymer from peeling back and tearing the paper, which of course watercolour wouldn't do. You could use wax resist - I wouldn't, but you could..... I've never forgiven masking fluid for ruining a perfectly good pair of corduroy trousers.

Peter, You acknowledge great replies as you say but you will not get many friends in the forum if you just natter on with more questions instead of taking anything on board..Being curious is one thing but not asking questions which you should know the answers to by now . A lot of the answers will be in the books you have bought on acrylics. you have books now ,as advised ? and you will find that there is no mention of masking fluid in any of them and I have many books on acrylics thats how i learned. Read your books and you will be able to join in the forum with some knowledge of the subject being discussed and you will get on fine. ....Syd

Peter - there was some concern that your posts were an elaborate leg-pull; I felt from the start that they were not, but others, I think, wondered if I was being naive.... Well, I probably can be. I was, and still am, involved in local politics - you have to have a bit of a trusting nature there, or you'd go round the bend. So I've assumed that your questions were genuine, even when some of them seemed a bit, well..... odd. I did quite enjoy the one about acrylic medium and soap ..... you didn't REALLY think there was soap in it - did you? I think though that we can all forget what it's like to start out with next to no information to guide us: there's a lot to hold in your head once you start reading, and watching dvds, and asking questions; and some of the answers, let us be frank about this, conflict - if you read an old book about oil painting, for instance, you're quite likely to find advice which would never be given today because if you took it, you'd ruin your painting. (Which is really why I wrote my e-book - did you notice that? How I cleverly dragged it, squealing and kicking, back into the conversation? I felt that while I certainly don't have all the answers, some of those who have in the past written on the subject have sometimes offered totally misleading advice about highly dodgy materials and methods.) I also understand that it's one thing to say "try it", but you've only got so much disposable income to spend on materials, and if you can avoid throwing them down the drain by using techniques that just waste them, well it makes sense to try to. What has impressed me, and I hope you, is that whatever people might have thought of your questions, there are genuine efforts here to answer them AND the technical advice has been excellent - thus proving the great value of POL, even if some of us can get a bit suspicious of questions posed in a particular way. You've cleared the air, I think, with your last two posts - and removed that suspicion. As Erebus (a craftily disguised old regular of immense experience and knowledge) says, you will always get an answer - we might tell you not to be daft, mind! But no genuine question will be left unanswered on the Forum, and I would encourage you to keep asking, and also to keep experimenting for yourself; this is probably how most of us here learned - few will have gone to art college, though some did, but whether we did or didn't we've all had to learn primarily by doing: and you'll learn more that way than from anything you could read or that anyone could tell you.

Re Masking Fluid with acrylics. There is no need. Masking fluid preserves what is there already - e.g. white paper, painted areas - when using water colours. Water colours, being transparent, can never hide an unwanted mark. Acrylics are available in opaque so an opaque white - Titanium - can simply be applied over the unwanted section and, when dry, can be painted over..

Yassus......