The versatility of acrylic means it can be used as watercolour in thin washes on paper, or as oil paint on board or canvas, but in addition it has some beautiful properties that are unique to itself and I consider these well worth exploring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because acrylic is fast-drying, and forms a plastic coating once dry, it cannot be removed. This might sound scary, but there is always the possibility of painting over mistakes, and the fact that the paint dries so quickly makes it an appealing medium to use as an underpainting for oils.

Be wary, though, as it is safe to put oil paint on top of acrylic, but not to put acrylics over oils because the oils dry more slowly and will eventually crack the acrylic on top. Hockney found this out with a series of paintings that he did some time ago, so it can happen to the best of us!

Personally, I don't much like using acrylic on paper because the rather shiny plastic coating that the paint forms is not very compatible with watercolour paper.

Sometimes I will use acrylic over watercolour or pigments, and then overpaint until the acrylic starts to break down and absorb some of the paint. It then creates a crumbly and slightly arbitrary fresco-like surface, which intrigues me. Really, though, I love to use acrylic on canvas with a fairly absorbent surface that I have primed myself.

One of the qualities that I love about acrylic is its ability to provide overlays of transparent washes that are intense and give great depth.

Alongside the introduction of some contrasting opaque areas I find the effect is very seductive, almost like looking into a pool of water or at an ancient stained-glass window.

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Demonstration: Orchestration

When starting Orchestration I knew that I wanted to produce a dark, rich painting that made the rich red pointed-leaf orchid glow.

This immediately meant that the background needed to be a series of very dark tertiary greens that sat back and threw the mid-tone of pure colour forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I started by plotting the painting on the canvas, and then blocked in the initial dark greens to establish the way that the composition was going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By adding a tertiary warm mid/dark tone to the table I hoped that I would be able to balance the strong red that I knew would explode across the top of the image, with echoes in the lower part of the painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I lightened up the surrounding to the background  as I realised that I needed to make the block directly behind the orchid the greener part of the dark, ambiguous background.

In order to differentiate between this block and the surrounding area I thought that I might try a glowing blue.

The wonderful thing about painting with acrylic on canvas is that it is possible to make these trials on canvas and know that a part of that painting history will remain, even if the composition or the colour combinations change.

At this stage of the painting I could start to see the problems that would follow and begin to select the way forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next stage at which I re-assessed the painting was when I had painted in the flower.

The idea of the painting revolved around the balance between the bright red of the flower and its background; as the red was a mid-tone, the greatest contrast had to be more subtle than just a tonal relationship, because the red was already halfway down the tonal scale. In order to optimise the contrast, I had to use every other variation at my disposal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other options open to me were a contrast in saturation and texture. First I tried to make the background more tertiary than the pure reds of the flower, and then I also incorporated some texture paste into the background to make a physical contrast in the painting between the thicker, more lumpy background (right) and the smoother and flatter flower.

At this stage I also decided that it was distracting to have the block behind the flower disappearing outside the top of the painting, so brought it down to be contained within the composition and therefore concentrate the viewer's eye on the flower.

When the painting dried it was clear that I needed to intensify the colours, and therefore I brightened the flower and a part of the table. The sheen from wet acrylic often makes an image appear brighter than it is, so is worth waiting until the painting is completely dry before assessing it. This is especially true when the subject has been painted on a largely dark background (which happened in this case), when the paint tends to become absorbed into that background when it is dry (below).

At this time, too, I felt that the background block needed breaking up to create more interest, so I moved the square to the right and added a strip on the left for balance.

The painting was now a number of layers of dark, rich colours on dark, followed by lighter colours that could glow and move within the painting, and my last changes were purely to adjust and add colour. First I laid a glaze of green knocked back by a small, neutralising addition of its opposite (red) on the square behind the flower, to bring the flower further forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next I added a bird to give scale and almost human interest, as my wooden birds often stand for human qualities and traits. I also hoped that this small addition would point the focus again up to the flower and lead back into the painting as the viewer's eye might otherwise have exited to the right without the encouragement to come back into the image.

This extract is taken from The Artist, July 2007 issue.