acrylics

Painting with acrylics is relatively new to me. I started with a little set I bought at a crafts store. You know the type, tiny little tubes in a box that are perfect to decide if you want to flirt with the medium a bit more. Not too good for much else.

I ended up buying a bigger set later, however started noticing something was off. When I was painting the Cone flowers I just couldn’t get the yellow and the white as opaque as I wanted. I struggled so much, laying down layer upon layer that I ended up mixing in gauche to achieve the effect I wanted. I assumed this was a quality that light colors had and left it at that.

When I started submerging myself in the world of acrylics and watched the Cornish harbor tutorial, light dawned on me. What I was experiencing is not a quality of all acrylic paints, rather the quality of poor acrylic paints. I looked really closely at the consistency and color of the paints in the tutorial and the ones I had in my hand. Well, there was one thing for sure that was similar: they were both in metallic tubes.

Once I learned the difference between artist quality versus student grade acrylics I started researching. I wanted to see what kind I could find easily accessible in my country. I finally found Pannoncolor, which promised what I was looking for.  I bought three tubes to test it, and I have to say they are quite nice. Suddenly my white is not as runny as water. It covers even the darkest patch with one sweep of opaque layer. And the best part is, when mixing the colors I don’t end up with something resembling mud, rather what the color wheel promises. I am sold!