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Long story short, I recently learned that a gal in my writing group plays with acrylic paints. We get together once or twice a month to visit, talk about writing or kids or whatever. Today we met to paint. It was a blast! She had these tubes of acrylic paint that were really thick. We mixed them with gloss medium and lightened them with white paint and darkened them with black. It was an experience like I've never had before. Best of all . . . I learned that mixed media is full of of Do Overs!
I tried a landscape. I made my tree bigger than my lakr and tried to wipe it off. "Don't do that. Just cover it up with gesso," my friend said. Gesso did cover the big oopsie. Unfortunately, when I tried to fix the lower part of the sky, it did not match the rest. No problem, I just made it darker and it became the ocean!
My paintings are pretty bad but I'm going to leave it like it is for awhile and just admire the fact that I made them. Later, when I get some of my own paints, I'll go over them with gesso and will start all over again.
I wonder how many Do Overs a 246 lb paper can hold before it becomes too thick? Maybe I should add paper to my Craft Wish List as well as paint. :-)
I love do overs! It has happened more than once with a journal page that I start off in one place ( and with one particular idea) and end somewhere completely different, thanks to gesso, and acrylic paint.
Consider not going over your "bad" paintings. They can serve as teaching tools and progress markers. As in: "Hmm, Well I learned that mixing green with red makes mud" or in 6 months: " Compared to my earlier work, look how much I improved!"
Consider not going over your "bad" paintings. They can serve as teaching tools and progress markers. As in: "Hmm, Well I learned that mixing green with red makes mud" or in 6 months: " Compared to my earlier work, look how much I improved!"
I just might do this. After all, they don't take up much room. Maybe I should start a mini portfolio and save one or two paintings a year just to measure my improvement.
Good to know that green and red make mud. I kind of thought so, since I once came up with a golden brown after mixing green and orange Distress ink. Wasn't the look I was going for, but it worked out in the end.
It just occurred to me that art is a bit like chemistry. Cool! :cool:
...I'm going to leave it like it is for awhile and just admire the fact that I made them.
This is the bit that made me smile most
How lovely to find you and your friend have something extra in common too - a painting meet up sounds perfect every once in a while!
Colour mixing is fun. Another good rule of thumb for you - mixing primary colours (red, blue, yellow) will give you a second colour. Mixing a primary colour with a colour that's already a mix or mixing two "secondary" colours is likely to produce a shade of brown! You can probably do the primary mixing in your head if you have access to pre-school memories but just in case:
Red + yellow = orange
Red + blue = purple
Yellow + blue = green
So your green and orange Distress inks were two "secondary" colours and therefore the brown was pretty much inevitable.
Varying the proportion of the colours in the mix will give you different hues and adding white or black, as you already saw, will give you tints and shades.
Joanne, I went looking at acrylic paint at Michaels and nearly fainted at the cost of a set of paints. This $100 set (plus a bunch of bigger tubes) is what my friend has: Liquitex� Heavy Body Artist Acrylic Paint, Classic 12 Set Even with a 40% coupon it's out of my price range at the moment.
But your post reminded me that I don't need a big set of paints. All I need are: Red, Blue, Yellow, Black & White. It might be frustrating not getting the exact shade I want but it will certainly be a learning experience trying.
Liquitex is a great brand and the heavy body will have that thick, almost buttery texture. They are, as they say, artist quality paints and they're pretty big tubes in that set so it's probably not bad value if that's what your art needs.
The good news is that not only do you not need that many colours, you don't need that grade of paint either. You'll have a fine old time experimenting with craft acrylics which will be much, much kinder to your wallet. And if your friend is happy to have you play with her paints from time to time then you get that lovely experience, too!
I don't know what brands Michaels stocks but if they have something like the bottles of DecoArt acrylics you'll be just fine with those.
You definitely don't need heavy bod y acrylics and you definitely don't need to purchase Liquitex or Golden branded paint, especially when you are starting out. Joanne is right- craft paints will do just fine and they have the added bonus of being available in tons of pre-formulated colors for you. The DecoArt line is great and I have seen them on clearance recently at Joann's. If you want something with more body than craft paint, many manufacturers have student grade acrylic paints which are much less expensive than heavy body paints. Also, I have never done this but I think you could probably add an acrylic gel medium to thinner paint to reduce fluidity and add body.
Do Overs
