Worst Mistake Acrylic Painters Make

Hi, I'm Michelle Tar and what I'm going to show you today is the most important thing that I teach anyone when I travel around the country and go to Canada and teach my

acrylic

methods and materials workshops. This is the only thing I never give up. any classroom without explanation, so this is what art conservators know, but 90 to 95% of artists don't, and this is the difference between a painting that will last and hold up and a painting which is vulnerable to peeling, lifting or falling. over time, so let's first go back in time to what I learned when I was in school and had some wonderful teachers.

I studied oils and

acrylic

s and one of my favorite techniques they taught me was to always cover the tone of the canvas with the ground. We called it to tone The Ground by taking a little bit of paint and adding a little bit of water or quite a bit of water to it, so look, I put just a pinch of pain in it and maybe you know, 60 to 80% water with paint, so I do that mix and then I put it on and I can get this beautiful wash almost like a watercolor that usually covers the entire canvas with it and creates a really nice background to paint on and well what?

I didn't know until much later that this technique that many artists have used is actually binding the paint film and if you haven't heard that term before, basically all paint is a pigment plus a binder b, so if you don't have enough binder , you don't have enough to retain the pigment or color on your canvas, that's how acrylic paint works, you have these big spherical acrylic molecules in a paint film with water, pigment and a few other ingredients, but what has to happen to create a stable foundation? The paint film is when the water evaporates, all those molecules end up intertwining together into a stable paint film, they form a honeycomb-like structure, so what it does is create something that retains the pigment on the canvas, that's so important and with oil it is similar.

It doesn't form the honeycomb structure, but basically the linseed oil retains the pigment on the canvas. What happened here is that I added so much water that I diluted the amount of acrylic in there so that each SPH fear that each molecule of acrylic is so far apart that they can't intertwine when the water evaporates, basically you have one molecule here, one molecule here and a particle of pigment in the middle, with nothing to hold it in, and over the years I've heard so many stories from artists where the paints came off years later. when they started painting with this toned base or even it just lifted on the next painting session, all the underpaint would lift when brushed, sorry, I don't really recommend doing this and if you have been doing it, I would try to find an alternative and I'll show you in a minute, but first I just want to remind you of the 30% rule, so use less than 30% water when you thin your acrylics and that's all you have. to remember, okay, now I'm going to show you how you can get this beautiful toned background, this wash effect with an acrylic medium and the medium that I'm going to recommend to you is an airbrush medium, so I have a little bit of airbrush medium in this jar. here and I'm going to rotate it so you can see how thin it is, it's almost as thin as water, it almost looks here almost like skim milk or something very thin, very watery.

I'm going to pour some. a little bit in this container and add water, I mean add the paint now, the difference between a medium and water is that media every time you see that word medium in acrylic it means it has acrylic polymer it has those molecules that you I was talking. so now I haven't blended this very well, the brush we're just going to put a little bit in there so you can see how fine it is and get the same kind of washed effect, you can even let it drip if you like that look, although it says medium airbrush you can use it for any acrylic paint you can use it to thin your paints you can use it to dip your brush instead of water you can use it to thin your other mediums if you want to get out of the habit of using so much water if you're used to that so there you have it .

I have made a toned background with an acrylic medium that is very similar to water, but it will adhere to that canvas over time and subsequent layers will stick. Now a lot of people when they hear this say, well, what about the bright medium? I have medium bright. Can I tone the canvas with a gloss medium? And you certainly can, so I'm going to show you the difference because a lot of people get confused when they first get into acrylic mediums. It's really confusing. This is a brilliant medium and let me show you. I'll shake them together and you can see how much thinner the acrylic in the airbrush medium is compared to the gloss medium.

Here it is much more. thick and slimy, so I think what I'll do is put a little bit on the canvas so you can see how nice and thick it is so I can do the same thing and in this case I'll just blend it well. on the canvas I think I put too much paint in there so what I'm getting is more of a glaze type effect and it's a lot thicker, a lot creamier, it holds up to a brush stroke and dries glossy, but it's another great way to start. Well, to start the painting, compared to the airbrush medium, compared to water, there is an exception to every rule and I want to show you that exception because what all of these canvases have in common is that they all have acrylic gesso as a base, so Acrylic plaster has acrylic polymer so go back to that honeycomb image that I created for you if you look at it on a microscopic level, the paint is a honeycomb structure, the media is a honeycomb structure and the plaster is a honeycomb structure. honeycomb, all created by the presence of those acrylic molecules, so you need to create more when you're building a stable paint film.

You're building more of that honeycomb in um, you know, greater volume or dimensions, so here what I have and I'll bring this. over here in the light so you can see this is water on watercolor paper um we're going to just use plain water now I can get away with adding as much water as I want I don't have to remember the 30 Percentage rule on any absorbent surface, ya be it watercolor paper or any type of paper that you want to paint on wood that doesn't have a primer or sealer on it, meaning raw wood canvases that you buy at the store on the roll that don't.

If you don't have um gesso you can tint paint and I actually made a video on painting with tint so let's see what that would look like. You can always and a poster board or illustration board, either of those are absorbent surfaces, so I go. take this water mixture that I had before and just brush it onto the watercolor paper and use it like using acrylic as watercolor on watercolor paper and that will be fine because what's happening is there are fibers in these absorbents. materials actually retain the pigment particles, so you don't need just the binder to hold it to the paper, you have something else, some other mechanical adhesion occurs.

Well, in summary, what we learned is that when you use water you end up with what is called an underpainting film, there is not enough binder to keep the paint permanently in the can. Use an airbrush medium to set a canvas or any other type of acrylic medium. It will create a stable paint film because it will have enough acrylic polymer. there to interlock, bond and form this stable paint film that will stay so ready. I hope this helped you a lot and I hope you spread the word to your other painter friends and

make

sure you're not done. um dilute the acrylic paint too much with water or also dilute it less