Acrylic Painting Courses

First created in the 1950s, acrylic paints are colored pigments suspended in an acrylic polymer emulsion, a type of plastic resin. The paints are water-soluble and can be thinned out or diluted using just water before painting on your support. Acrylics can work on a variety of surfaces ranging from traditional canvas to even glass. (Hint: If you’re not sure the paint will adhere, test a small area first.) The paints can be applied using brushes, a palette knife, or even your fingers, and they can be poured directly onto the surface. Many artists appreciate that acrylic paints are naturally fast-drying and are also capable of extensive experimentation using mix-ins or “mediums” to change the viscosity or texture of the paint. This versatility allows the acrylic artist to create realistic, abstract, or even mixed media artworks with ease.

To start, you'll need water for activation. You'll then need a combination of stiff-bristled brushes for thick paint application and soft-bristled brushes for watercolor-like effects. You may want a variety of paint colors (7 to 12) with a palette knife and a palette for mixing and either canvas or paper. As you advance in your acrylic painting practice, you can start to experiment with medium add-ins. These mediums retain the chemical integrity of the acrylic paint while yielding different desirable effects. For example, a gel medium can be used to create thin, watery washes. Texture mediums can be used, like adding sand to your paint. You can also use modeling paste to build sculptural or impasto layers on your canvas. You can use a flow medium to alter the consistency and viscosity of the paint, which is great for pouring paint directly onto the surface. Incorporating a slow-drying medium will increase the paint's drying time.

Acrylic painting has a lot of positive characteristics that set it apart from other painting mediums. Like watercolors, acrylics can be thinned out to a wash by using just water. However, unlike watercolors, acrylics cannot bleed into a new layer of applied color once the surface is dry. As a bonus, a dry acrylic painting becomes completely water-resistant. Since you don't need turpentine to thin acrylic paints or to clean your brushes, like with oil painting, you are not limited to working in well-ventilated areas. This makes acrylic ideal for artists without dedicated studio spaces. Acrylic paintings are less resistant to fading when exposed to light and have excellent permanence or lightfastness standards as opposed to oil and watercolor paintings. Acrylic doubles as an adhesive and creates a suitable drawing surface for graphite or oil pastels. So, acrylic paint is ideal for artists working in mixed media and collage.