Explore four types of acrylic paint from Golden with Tony Paul:
Golden Heavy Body
This really is paint with muscles! Solid and smooth with great colour saturation.
Golden Heavy Body Acrylic (known simply as Golden Acrylics) was the first range of acrylic colours made by the company.
Top features:
- Thick, smooth consistency
- Excellent lightfastness
- No fillers, toners or dyes
It was renowned for its exceptionally smooth, thick buttery consistency, with 108 colours offering excellent lightfastness. It contains no fillers, extenders, opacifiers, toners or dyes.
Each colour is individually formulated depending on the nature of the pigment.
Colours that tolerate high pigment loading dry to a more opaque matte finish, while those that are more reactive and do not accept a high pigment loading will dry to more of a glossy finish, with a greater degree of transparency.
There is no attempt to unify the sheen of the various colours with additives. If an overall sheen is required, this can be achieved by varnishing the painting upon completion.
The colours are available in 60ml and 150ml tubes and pots of 119ml, 236ml, 473ml and 946ml. Starter sets are also available.
Where to buy
Golden Heavy Body Acrylics can be purchased from Jackson's Art Supplies by clicking here and from art shops and other online retailers.
Colour tests
I was sent a set of eight 60ml Golden Heavy Body Colours.
The set is called Colour Mixing – Modern Theory. Unlike many sets it contains no earth colours, just two yellows, reds and blues, plus green and white.
ORDER YOUR MODERN THEORY SET HERE
The colours
First of all I can confirm that Golden Heavy Body Acrylic paint is, indeed, buttery!
I painted the colours in tube consistency; see how opaque they are.
1. Yellows
As Golden claim that they do not put extender or fillers into the colours there can only be one reason why the usually transparent Hansa yellow light (PY3) is almost totally opaque, that is because the acrylic binder has been very heavily loaded with pigment.
The same can be said for the other Hansa yellow medium – a warmer colour.
2. Reds
The Napthol red light, a normally semi-opaque colour, is again densely opaque and the only colour to show much transparency is quinacridone magenta, the cool red.
3. Blues
The remaining three colours were all rated as transparent yet, as with all of the darker transparent colours, in heavy layers they can all look blackish.
The first of these – anthraquinone blue (PB60) is often named indanthrene blue, a powerful violet-biased blue, like a darker ultramarine.
Next is an old favourite, phthalo blue (green shade), which is a very powerful blue, making vibrant greens and duller purples.
Finally, we have phthalo green (blue shade), an unnatural blue green that should not be let out on its own, but is brilliant at making a wide range of wonderful greens when added to yellows, ochres, siennas and umbers.
No black? I hear you cry. Well, there is a great black if you mix the magenta with phthalo green. Diluted or with white added the mix will make a lovely range of greys.
Golden Fluid Acrylic
Golden Fluid - If you like dripping like Jackson Pollock these are great, but they are also good for brushed effects.
Equal to the intensity of Golden Heavy Body Acrylics, but with an even, flowing characteristic, Golden Fluid acrylics are useful for dry-brush applications, fine details, pouring, spraying and staining techniques.
Top features:
- Intense colours
- Lightfast
- Creamy consistency
- Ideal for a wide range of techniques
A selection of 85 quality lightfast pigments are loaded into an acrylic polymer binder.
The heavy cream consistency of the colour flows smoothly, retaining colour intensity, tinting strength, film integrity and adhesion.
Fluid is ideal for blending with other acrylics, gels, mediums, gessoes and grounds, enabling a great number of techniques to be explored.
Golden Fluid acrylics are available in 30ml bottles, 119ml, 236ml, 473ml and 946ml plus 3.78l in two whites and black only bottles. There are two starter sets available.
Where to buy
Golden Fluid Acrylics can be purchased from Jackson's Art Supplies by clicking here and from art shops and other online retailers.
Nude Study (detail), Golden Fluid Acrylics, (20.5x25.5cm)
For the nude study above I found the colours well-pigmented and quick-drying once applied and, if undiluted, create slight impasto.
Overpainting was a joy, with good obliteration when used in tub consistency, or semi-transparent when diluted with water and applied in scumbles or glazes.
Golden Open Acrylics
Golden Open - The colours will blend and fuse beautifully and you can take your time doing it.
This range is a departure from acrylics as we know them.
Although acrylic’s fast-drying capacity can be considered an advantage, many would-be acrylic painters are put off by its speed of drying, making such techniques as blending difficult unless you’re very fast. Mixes, too, tend to dry quickly on the palette. This is where Golden Open comes into its own.
Two hours after I made the Open colour swatches they were still wet and workable. I have used them consistently, particularly for portraiture. Oil painters will find their handling easier than other acrylics.
Top features:
- Remain wet for longer allowing for oil painting techniques
- Resist skinning
- Ideal for use en plein air and printing
Golden adapted the acrylic resin to remain wet (or open) for considerably longer to enable blending, softening, shading and glazing techniques, much prized by oil painters for portrait and landscape work.
Open Acrylic resists skinning and remains wet on the palette for an extended period.
It is ideal for use in plein air painting, mono-printing and screenprinting, and may be blended with traditional Golden acrylic colours, mediums and gels to control working time.
For maximum working time, use Open thinners and mediums.
EXPLORE OPEN MEDIUMS HERE
Golden Open is available in 79 colours, including six iridescent and metallic colours, in 60ml and 150ml tubes of titanium white, and in pots of 119ml, 236ml and 946ml. A range of starter sets are also available.
Where to buy
Golden Open Acrylics can be purchased from Jackson's Art Supplies by clicking here and from art shops and other online retailers.
Michael, Golden Open Acrylics, (30.5x25.5cm)
Although I like the quick-drying character of acrylics, it can restrict the freedom of painting wet on wet.
Although not as solid as Golden Heavy Body, Golden Open is punchy, which helps me achieve a sense of solid form to the head.
Painted entirely wet on wet, I blended, smoothed and softened, very much as I would do with oils, to create a loose and colourful portrait.
The colours
Golden Open Acrylics are a slightly softer consistency and less highly pigmented. They are nevertheless strong and vibrant.
I was sent an Open Landscape Set of 1x59ml titanium white, together with 22ml tubes of cadmium yellow primrose, yellow ochre, cadmium red light, alizarin crimson hue, ultramarine blue hue, manganese blue hue, sap green blue hue and a 30ml bottle of Open thinners.
The use of hue colours is interesting. Until the 1990s genuine alizarin crimson (PR83) was a must in the paintbox. It was the best crimson available, but it was prone to fading in thin applications or when mixed with white. It was replaced as newer, more lightfast purplish reds became available, but as, in this case, often still bearing the original colour’s name, with a hue suffix.
For the same reason sap green, which was originally made from berries, was replaced by more stable pigments.
Manganese blue is made as a hue colour (a blend of phthalo blue, phthalo green and zinc white), as the original pigment is no longer produced because of its toxicity.
Golden High Flow Acrylics
Golden High Flow - You can draw with the bottles if you are careful to adjust how open the screw top is, but make sure you completely remove the seal beneath the cap or it will leak at the neck. I found this out the hard way!
Top features:
- Ink-like consistency
- Used for a wide range of techniques
- Intense colours
- Most colours are lightfast
Golden High Flow Acrylics have an ink-like consistency that lends itself to a wide range of techniques. They are designed for airbrushing, pen and ink, refillable markers, pouring, glazing and traditional painting techniques.
High flow acrylics are high intensity, made in 49 opaque and transparent colours, all but five of which are lightfast – the five non-lightfast colours are the fluorescents.
The colours are packed in 30ml, 119ml and 473ml bottles and in 10x30ml bottle sets in opaque or transparent colours.
The colours
I was sent the High Flow Acrylic transparent set of 10x30ml bottles.
The colours were:
- Titanium white
- Hansa yellow medium
- Nickel azo gold
- Napthol red light
- Quinacridone magenta
- Burnt sienna
- Ultramarine
- Phthalo blue green shade
- Phthalo green blue shade
- Carbon black
Tracks through the Rape Field, Golden High Flow Acrylic, (20.5x15cm)
Golden High Flow scores over traditional ink, because all the colours in the range, apart from the fluorescents, are lightfast.
Using the wonderful Waterford 140lb hot-pressed paper I found that the colours were bright and strong, and diluted with water into smooth flowing washes which were waterproof when dry.
This simple subject was a delightful painting experience; the colours are so easy to use.
Where to buy
Golden High Flow Acrylics can be purchased from Jackson's Art Supplies by clicking here and from art shops and other online retailers.
About Golden
During the 1930s Sam Golden joined Leonard Bocour to found Bocour Artist Colours, which made handcrafted oil colours, used by the likes of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Between 1946 and 1949 the first Artists’ acrylic colour was ready for sale. It was a solvent-based acrylic, called Magna.
Following this a water-mixable acrylic emulsion was developed and marketed as Aquatec. After retiring from Bocour in 1980 Sam Golden founded Golden Artists’ Colours, along with members of his family. The burgeoning company expanded from small beginnings and today has a formidable state-of-the-art factory in New Berlin, USA.
Well established in acrylics, Golden extended into oils, by taking over Williamsburg Oil Colours and have also introduced a range of quality watercolour, named QoR Professional Watercolours.
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT QoR WATERCOLOURS HERE
This feature is taken from the April 2015 issue of Leisure Painter
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