Acrylic

I am a new member with no formal training. I am very interested in improving, and am anxious for any critiques.

I am also interested in establishing a dialog with anyone else who is experimenting with using acrylics for portraits. It seems that professional artists have not used this medium at all and we need to start a forum to help each other.

Karen McPherson

[Jean Kelly]

Hi Karen,

Check out the acrylic section under critiques. This where you need to be. I've been using an acrylic based fabric paint for my portraits so far. I combine them with pastel, trying to create a "glow". I miss the warmth of oil though, so I'm returning to it. It's nice to see another acrylic person, though.

[Patti Jo Lemke]

Karen,

My name is Patti Jo and am new also. I paint portraits in acrylics and have for 20 years! I didn't have training in it; I did in oils, but I lack the patience and, at this time, the room for oils, so I started doing acrylics. It was a trial and error learning deal, and it was rough at first, (meaning the work was rough), but I have gotten it down fairly well now.

I am in agreement that we should start a forum on that subject, as I would love to hear from other acrylic artists. I have just been authorized to become a Licensed Emmett Kelly, Jr. Official Artist, and I am thrilled at the honor. He is the famous Hobo Clown, in case you didn't know. Hope to talk more on this subject.

Patti Jo

Hello Patti Jo,

It was great to receive a message from another acrylic artist. I have been out of touch for the past few months and am just now getting my emails. I had my first ever portrait commissions and they were to be given as Christmas presents. It was an unbelievably stressful time.

I visited your web site and viewed some of your paintings. I love your work. Tell me, what is involved in being a licensed Emmet Kelly, Jr official artist? I do remember him very well, so that will probably tell you that I'm over 50. I congradulate you, even though I'm not sure what it entails I'm sure that it is an honor and one not often or easily bestowed.

My son gave me oil paints for Christmas and I have been trying them out. I can't imagine being patient enough to wait on them to dry.

I am very interested in starting a forum for acrylic portraits.

Karen McPherson

[Patti Jo Lemke]

Hi Karen...I saw got your letter..and, yes, it is nice to hear from another acrylic artist!

Thanks for the compliment on my work, and I have to agree with you on the patience it takes to do oils. But, it is something, that when I have my studio built, and have room, that I fully intend to acheive. As you can do so much more with oils, as far as blending, smoothness, softness. I have worked with acrylics for many years, and it is still hard to get the softness that I crave. It truly can only be gotten with oils! But, for now..acrylics, it is!

To become an EKJ Licensed artist entailed submitting my work for approval, and then you have to pay an advance on the royalties that they, the licensing company, will recieve. And, I must say, it is a little spendy! So, you have to be very serious and expect to make lots of sales, as they don't want to deal with someone who is just making it a hobby!

Keep painting, and get on with the oils, if you have room and can muster up the patience. The rewards will be worth it and your work will be taken more seriously, and the value will be there. Acrylics are not looked upon as a serious medium, as yet. I believe that in years to come, it will, as they are supposed to have longevity..that is, not crack or discolor, like oils. Only time will tell.

Well, I am working on a portrait commission now, of, an Idian chief...so I must get to the easel. Thanks for writting...Happy painting..Patti Jo

[Michael Fournier]

Oh! Acrylics - that wonderful medium I learned to both love and hate as an illustrator.

For illustration work, acrylics was my medium of choice for years. Acrylics have many advantages for an illustrator under a tight deadline.

• They dry fast, which is a great advantage in itself when you must deliver a painting the same day you painted it.
  
  You can thin acrylics and paint like watercolor, but you can paint over it without disturbing the previous layer, unlike watercolors or gouache.
  
  You can paint over a under painting the same day.
  
  You can paint over mistakes right away.

Another benefit to acrylics is they are flexible, so you can take a canvas off the stretchers or strip an illustration board and roll it and put it in a tube for shipping without the paint cracking. And for reproduction, you can wrap a painting around a drum scanner without having to make a film transparency.

You can even have the best of both worlds and paint oils over an acrylic underpainting. If you plan to try this, a word of caution: a binding layer of some kind or alkyd resin medium should be used to help bind the oils to the acrylics. I used oils mixed with Liquin over acrylic and have never had a problem. Also I have used acrylic gesso mixed with acrylic paint as an underpainting, and then painted over it with oils - this works great when you have a complex drawing. You can then keep or cover as much of the under painting as you want.

Now these are techniques that are very accepted for illustration work and I have never had any paintings separate or crack. Of course, if you paint oils over acrylics you must treat the painting as a oil painting from then on. You can

[Chris Saper]

Hi Karen,

If you go the "search messages" button at the top of any Forum page, and search for acrylics, you'll find a great deal already here, as well as the dedicated critique section called "Other Medium Critique", which includes acrylic and other non-tradtional media.

To the extent that your interest is in securing portraiture commissions on a working basis, you are no doubt aware that very few painters or brokers emphasize acrylics, and that your market will be much more favorable for the more traditional media.

[Richard Monro]

Hi Karen,

I have painted in acrylics almost exclusively for the last 15 years because of a bad reaction to the solvents contained in oil paints. I have found many great tips in Golden Paints web site www.goldenpaints.com. Suggest you look carefully at their color mixing guide as it provides some very good tips and practice recommendations. I substituted Pyrrolic Red Light for the Napthol Red Light as I wish to use the most permanent colors possible. Other than that I found that I could mix virtually any color I needed with only the six recommended colors plus titanium white. I also found it helpful (although somewhat tedious) to create the color mixing charts that Richard Schmidt recommended in his book "Alla Prima". A great exercise for learning to work with your selected palette. Wish you success. Acrylics are a great medium once you learn to work with them.

[Sharon Knettell]

Hi Karen,

Welcome to the Forum!

I am always interested in trying new media. I talked to one of my favorite artist material purveyors recently. I asked if he knew any figurative artists that were well known, good and naturalistic who were using acrylics. He said yes. I asked if they were getting the nuances subtleties of oil. He said close, but not what I was looking for.

I reordered my oils, but I am willing for you or someone else to prove us wrong.

[Richard Monro]

There has been a lot of discussion about oils verses acrylics. Principle issues seem to revolve around working time, being able to work wet into wet and blending edges. I work exclusively in acrylics (15 Years) because of bad reactions to oils and have learned some valuable lessions to pass along. I live in Scottsdale, Arizona where drying times for acrylic paint right out of the tube is measured in seconds when applied to the canvas (It's the 7% humidity). With that being said here are some tips:

1) Drying time is a blessing allowing you to work over a passage almost right away. If you are confident with your applications the project moves along quickly.

2) Scrumbling allows subtle blending and creates very luminous skin tones. However, it may take several scrumble layers to achieve the luminous effect.

3) Working wet into wet used to be a problem. Recently I began experiments with Golden's Acrylic Glazing Liquid (AGL). That product now allows me to use oil techniques with acrylic paints. The secret is to mix the AGL 50/50 with the paint. Also, apply a layer of AGL to the surface being painted before applying any of your color mixture. You can then work wet into wet, blend edges and have extended working time just as in oils. With this technique alone I get about one hour of open working time in the dry desert. However, by periodically applying a water mist to the surface being worked, working time is extended almost indefinitely. Stop the mist and the film is dry enough to be reworked in 2 hours or less.

The archival properties of acrylics are also noteworthy. Having been a research scientist in one of my former careers, I made a careful examination of the potential longevity of fine art acrylics before making the transition from oils to acrylics. (We artists tend to be a very conservative and traditional group by nature don't we?) My research revealed that acrylics will probably match or exceed oil paintings for longevity over time. The film remains flexible while oils continue to harden. Thus cracking will be less or non existent. The acrylic polymer "locks in" or encapsulates the paint. Thus the leaching of mediums or binder chemicals that occur in oils and which ultimately can create support problems over time doesn't occur in acrylics. Because of the encapsulation ,acrylics paint layers do not tend to grow more transparent with time as sometimes occurs with oils.

With all that being said, acrylics do require some changes from the way one may have worked in oils. The biggest one is to compensate for the value shift that occurs as the polymer film dries. Colors darken slightly and become a little more saturated. However, one quickly learns to make the necessary compensations.

I venture to make a predicition that acrylics will eventually take their place along side oils in figurative and portrait fine art as a medium of choice.So if you want a change, give acrylics a try. Once you learn the tricks of the medium you might be favorabley impressed.