This is my first post in which I review art materials, mainly my favorites, but there will be some which I didn’t like.
Just before I left the Netherlands and moved to America I brought a couple of pots of Golden open acrylics. And then forgot all about them….
Which was a mistake because these paints are truly amazing!
These acrylics have a much slower drying time, which means of course that you have a lot more time to paint and don’t have to have a plant sprayer with water next to you to keep misting your palette to keep your acrylics moist.
With these paints it is possible to cover your palette and continue the next day with the same paints! This greatly reduces waste and is also nice for lazy artists…
Here is my palette covered in plastic, I do sprinkle some water on it before I cover it.
Because they are ”slow” Golden recommends that you use them only in thin layers, but hey, what is ”slow”? When an oil painting can only leave the studio after about three months???
I call them ”pretty fast”! So I never bother about mixing them with heavy body acrylics. Which you can do btw, you can mix all golden acrylics as you like, and I have mixed them when I didn’t have a particular colour I needed, but not for the purpose of speeding drying time.
I have to add that apart from the open acrylics being a dream to paint with, they are also truly beautiful, deep semi glossy rich colours which finally rival a good oil paint in their richness.
Look at these deep rich blues and blacks:
You can buy them in pots, tubes, and a couple different colour coordinated sets which are made up of smaller sized tubes, they might not be exactly the ones you want so you might have to buy two different sets, but they are worthwhile if you want to give a new paint a try out and the smaller tubes are ideal for your pochade box*.
I think the drying time is just right. I only encountered a snag one time. I was going to see Buckethead in concert, he is the most amazing guitar player of all time btw, and I wanted to give him a painting, out of gratitude for all his wonderful music and concerts. I choose a painting of R’lyeh, the underwater city where dead Cthulhu dreams… (HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos) And true to my usual procrastination I only started the box frame at noon. So I grabbed a pot of Acrylic to paint the frame thinking this will dry fast and when I leave at five it’s going to be dry. I accidentally grabbed the open acrylics, I painted it on thick and three layers and when I got to hand over my gift at sort of nine in the evening it was still somewhat sticky…..
Always check your paint pot before you use it……
There are several advantages in having these paints in your arsenal as an artist:
- slow drying but much much faster than oil paint
- easy to to take along for plein air* painting and travel
- easy cleanup with water
- no need for oils and mediums
- no chemical smells
- beautiful rich vibrant colours
- good flow
*pochade box: a box for outdoor/travel, keeps your brushes, paints, mediums and usually at least one canvas. Or with watercolours a watercolour block.
* plein air: as in painting outside, not in the studio
Aafke.Art 