You may find a full size palette too cumbersome for painting when you are out and about – whether it be plein air or in the classroom. In these conditions, some artists prefer to use a disposable tear off palette. These one use palettes are made of an impervious parchment film which can be discarded at the end of each session. Professional grade acrylics on the other hand, are designed for professional artists and advanced students. They are made with higher quality pigments and binders and have a greater color intensity, lightfastness, and permanence than student grade acrylics. They handle better than student grade acrylics due to a smoother consistency. You'll also find that they have a higher price tag than student grade acrylics. There aren’t many hard and fast rules when it comes to acrylic painting. Sometimes the best approach is to experiment and see where your work takes you. Other artists prefer to do some preliminary sketches or paintings to help keep their focus. Once you’re settled on your composition, your sketches can be scaled up onto canvas. This can be done using a grid transfer method, with scaling dividers, pantographs, tracing paper, tracedown or even a projector. Use Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic Paint with Liquitex String Gel for some interesting effects If you’re unsure whether acrylic is the right medium for you, we suggest you invest in some student-grade paints. These cheaper colours won’t be as bright and lightfast as with higher-end options, but you’ll get a feel for the application, consistency and texture of acrylic paint. If you’re a committed artist with a mind to selling or exhibiting work, you probably already know it’s worth spending what you can: you’ll see the results in the vibrancy of the colours, and they’ll better stand up to the test of time.

Fluid acrylics: These paints have the consistency similar to oil or even water, and are often used for pouring and other fluid techniques. These acrylics are great creating smooth, even washes of color or very fine detail. Depending on the intent you have with your art, each paint type will have advantages and disadvantages. DPP stands for the pigment DiketoPyrroloPyrrole. It is a hybrid pigment - an innovation in pigment manufacturing where blends produce pigment with a balance of properties (i.e blend of organic and inorganic pigment). Organic and inorganic pigments differ in performance. Organic pigments have strengths in chroma and tint strength but are weaker in lightfastness and opacity; it is the other way round with inorganic pigments. Hybrid pigments provide an alternative, that help to bridge the gap between performance without neglecting environmental consideration.

Quality

Acrylic paints come in what I consider to be three basic types for fine art painting. These are what you will most likely be faced with for artist grade paints.

Liquitex Professional Acrylic Artist Colour Heavy Body comes from the world's bestselling brand in acrylic colours. Use in conjunction with Liquitex Inks and Liquitex Spray Paints for even greater speed and flexibility. If you have a stiff, dried up brush that you are trying to rescue you may be able to remove the paint with Masters’ Brush Cleaner and Preserver, Zest-it Acrylic Brush Cleaner and Reviver or Loxley Brush Cleaner and Preserver.Another important quality to look out for is colour shift – that is how much the paint changes colour as it dries. Minimising this removes the need to compensate for changes in colour and the best acrylic paints dry much like the colour you get initially. The pigment load will affect the vibrancy of the colors,” Clare says. For the best pigment load, Clare recommends choosing professional quality paints—like many of the brands listed above, including Golden, Liquitex, and Windsor & Newton—to achieve optimum vibrancy. Standard acrylic paints have a consistency that’s just a little runnier than toothpaste. It can be thinned easily with water – although only to an approximate 50/50 mix, after which the polymers break down and it starts to bead on whatever substrate you’re using. There are heavy-body acrylics which are more butter-like, which are well-suited for textured paintings; fluid acrylics, on the other hand, have a cream-like consistency that doesn’t retain any brushwork. We’ve included all three types in our round-up. Student grade paints keep their prices economical by replacing costly pigments with less expensive alternatives. They also contain higher levels of additives and extenders. For example higher series pigments – like Cadmium and Cobalt – command a high price in artist grade paints. In student ranges you will see them replaced with ‘hues’ – like Cadmium Red Hue and Cobalt Blue Hue. These substitutions offer similar properties and colour to the genuine pigments, but without the associated price tag. Cobalt Blue is made using a single pigment, whereas Cobalt Blue Hue is made from three pigments.

|Cryla Artists' Acrylic Paints are ideal for high textured impasto techniques with visible brush strokes, knife marks and complex layering techniques. Soft Body Acrylics have a consistency similar to heavy cream. Their low viscosity means colour application is smooth. They offer the same pigment load as Heavy Body, so your colours will be bright and vibrant. This paint will retain subtle brush strokes, however the effect isn’t as pronounced as it is in heavy body acrylics. They are perfect for all kinds of techniques, whether you’re using them straight from the bottle or mixing with mediums. They are popular for using with fluid art techniques such as acrylic paint pouring. Their fluid characteristic makes them easy to blend and to paint in fine detail.Stretched Canvas is perhaps the most common painting surface. It has a long history of use, and offers a good support to ensure your painting will stand the test of time. Today’s artists have much more choice in the surfaces they paint on. And as with all Liquitex products, the pigments in Heavy Body have passed extensive tests for lightfastness. Each pigment is rated according to the American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM), and we only use pigments rated ASTM I or II*. This means your work will have the greatest archival permanence possible – at least 50 years+ in gallery conditions – with no color shifting or fading, to stay vibrant and true. What can Heavy Body be used for? The chief characteristic that sets pricer acrylics from cheaper ones is their ‘lightfastness’, or durability under light. You might not notice in your paintings until weeks, months or even years after their completion, but certain patches of colour can bleach and fade in the daylight. Not ideal.

Series numbers are used to separate paints by cost. The higher the series the more expensive the colour – so Series 4 colours will cost more than Series 1. The price difference does not indicate any difference in quality. Rather that some colours are more costly to manufacture – so whether you’re buying from Series 1 or Series 4 the quality will be the same. Each of these colours from the Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylics range is a different price as they are from different series. Each Heavy Body color formula reflects the qualities of its pigment. Colors that tolerate a higher pigment load dry to a more opaque, matte finish. Colors that are more reactive and do not allow as much pigment loading tend to have a glossier, more transparent, finish. Because Heavy Body colors contain no matting agents, the gloss of each color will be different. Characteristics: For lightfastness, NR means “Not rated” – meaning that it has not been tested by ASTM for lightfastness. ASTM D4303 is the test method for Lightfastness for pigment-based artist materials. Fluorescent dyes and color coated micas are not usually in scope for this test as they are not real pigments with Color Index as such. Fluorescent colors by their very nature are dye based, they are known to be fugitive and cannot withstand the negative effects of UV light like most pigments. This pertains to all fluorescent colors and has nothing to do with a professional or student range of art materials. We do our own in-house Blue wool test for Permanence rating where we test all our colors. Our chemists use the latest basket bead-mill technology to bring out the best in every carefully selected pigment. The dispersion goes through the bead milling machine to grind the pigment particles down to the required finer particles size. Each color has its optimum dispersion, depending on the types of pigments used. Tiny reinforced ceramic beads give fine dispersion, great color development, strength and brightness. Every color is individually formulated to allow the unique character of each pigment to express itself – whether it’s naturally opaque, semi-opaque or transparent. Once ground, the color is mixed under vacuum - to prevent aeration and remove the bubbles. After extensive quality testing, it’s ready to go into tubes.

Heavy Body Acrylic is our nearest paint in terms of viscosity and behaviour, but has many other characteristics that are different to oil paint. Try it out and see how you go. Short handled brushes are suitable for fine detail or small scale work. Their short handle means you can work much closer to your canvas, making adding those fine finishing touches easy. They are the preferred choice for artists who favour a precise, detailed technique. Synthetic and Natural Hair Brushes Slow Drying acrylics ( Golden Open Acrylic Colours) have an extended open time. This property allows acrylic artists to work with techniques usually restricted to oils. Best used in thin applications, these paints are not suitable for impasto techniques. If used in a stay wet palette their colour can remain usable for weeks – reducing the chance of paint wastage.