Reasons Acrylic Is An Awesome Art Form

Creating art is fun. When you create something beautiful through painting, you’re stimulating your creative mind while relieving mental strain. Relieving stress through painting can lead to a happier and healthier lifestyle. And instead of transforming your home using prints and posters, you can proudly hang your masterpieces and enjoy your hard work by looking at them every day. Whether you are a hobbyist or a professional artist, you are probably experimenting with different media such as oil, watercolour, pastel, gouache and acrylic, discovering their advantages and disadvantages.

Many artists’ favourite- acrylic paints are simple to use and clean to handle. Since its invention in the mid-20th century, acrylic paint has provided artists with an alternative to toxic, pricey, slow-drying oil paints. Today, more and more artists are taking note of artist acrylic colour’s quality, incorporating it into their palettes regularly. And since they are suitable in a wide range of fine art, decorative and craft applications, acrylic colours have become widely popular. If you are not convinced of the many advantages of acrylics, the following features might help you understand this medium better.

Acrylics Allow You to Paint Everywhere

There’s no doubt that acrylic paint is one of the most versatile mediums and one of the least toxic. It is water-soluble when wet, and yet because it is a plastic polymer, it dries into a flexible, water-resistant, and durable surface. One of the greatest advantages of acrylic colours is that you have many options for acrylic painting surfaces. High-quality acrylic-based paint is suitable for a wide range of surfaces, including canvas, wood, air-dried clay, plaster, cardboard, paper, leather and some plastics. You can also use concrete, brick or cloth, basically anything that isn’t too glossy or too greasy.

And because you don’t have to contend with oil seeping out of the paint and damaging the surface, you don’t have to prime the surface before you paint on it. Another great advantage is that you can use acrylics anywhere. Since they are water-based, there’s not as much in there that gives off gases, allowing you to paint in your kitchen, living-room and even your bedroom. Whether you intend to buy acrylic colours sets or individual tubes, look for fast drying paints to layer colours quickly.

Layer Colours Quickly with Fast Drying Acrylics

Another great advantage of working with acrylic paints is they dry a lot quicker when compared with other mediums such as oils or alkyd oils. When painting with acrylics, you don’t have to leave your art for days or even weeks between layers. Your fast-drying artist acrylic colour set allows you to go back to your painting even as little as 20 minutes later and continue. The fast-drying ability of acrylics can be especially helpful if you are learning because you can quickly see the results. Many professional artists also choose acrylic colours too as they can organise their work times better, finish commissions faster or do demos on-site.

You can purchase your acrylic paint in a variety of forms-in tubes, jars, plastic squeeze bottles, and small ink-bottles. Whatever form you use, but particularly for large jars and tubes, it is important to make sure the paint is sealed properly to keep the paint from drying out.

You Can Create Great Colour Effects

You can use acrylic paints to create artwork with great colour effects. One of the greatest techniques where you can achieve great effects with different colours is acrylic pouring. Through acrylic pouring you can quickly smoothen any unwanted texture while getting amazing colour effects. To achieve a marbleised effect or rich coloured gazes, it might be a good idea to purchase a set of 12 great colours that dry in a semi-matte finish. Make sure to choose a set of easy-to-squeeze bottles that you can simply decant into smaller containers for your artistic needs.

Control Colour Consistency and Texture

A significant aspect of acrylic is how malleable they are. You can incorporate another media, and it can take on the qualities of other paints. For example, if you add an acrylic retarder with your paint, it might decelerate the drying time so that it acts more like an oil-based paint. You can choose other mediums to make your acrylics crackle, shimmer, or dry even faster. Using other mediums can be a great way to control the colour consistency and texture of your artwork. You can make colours shinier by adding gloss medium to the paint or by adding a coat of feeling of depth.

Easier to Use Than Watercolour Paint

Although both watercolour and acrylic paints are water-soluble, there are several differences between acrylic and watercolour paints. Everyone who has tried watercolours knows how difficult it is to get it right. Watercolour is the reverse of acrylics working from light to dark instead of from dark to light. Acrylic paints are much more user-friendly and simple to use. They are also more forgiving of mistakes. With acrylics, you can either remove or paint over your mistakes which are not so easy to do with watercolours. And while watercolours can only be used on paper, you can choose a plethora of surfaces for your acrylic paints.