NEW WAYS TO LIQUEFY YOUR TUBE ACRYLICS

AND DO IT WITH COMMON HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS!

 Today’s post is an addition to or further exploration of my last post, where I used Future floor polish (now called Pledge Floor Care with Future shine), basically a clear acrylic emulsion about as viscous as vegetable oil. I learned that it was a great extender or flow improver. Future floor polish is also both a great clear coat on finishes (especially on Yupo!), and a barrier between two different kinds of finishes.

Thin, flowy acrylics can be used to drip, spatter, pour, as an ink in pens, airbrushes, and squeeze bottles. They also make great glazes, especially when added to clear acrylic medium. But thinning acrylics can be tricky! Your paint MUST be like skim milk WITHOUT any lumps! I thinned and creamed the tube or craft paint with a little water first.

Many of you may already know that isopropyl alcohol can be splattered into wet, fluid acrylics to create a cool effect.

Well, it can also be used as an acrylic paint thinner! But this time I will discuss another unconventional, unexpected thinning medium. 


This stuff works great to liquefy acrylic paint!



Thinning Acrylics with Glass Cleaner

In its usual form, glass cleaner is a blue tinted liquid. Unlike the floor polish, glass cleaner has no acrylic binder so it cannot extend the paint, merely thin it. Glass cleaner has a tiny amount of detergent and some alcohol to reduce surface tension of the water. Most glass cleaners also have ammonia which helps to keep acrylic emulsions liquified.

TIP: Next time you finish a painting session with leftover paint, make some of it liquid and pour into a clean spray or squeeze bottle. Be sure to label the bottle as "fluid." 

Hey, thanks for viewing this post...I hope you try this stuff, as well as
the floor polish and the alcohol!

And have fun, fun, fun till your daddy takes the T-Bird away!



SOMETIMES YOU GOTTA ADMIT YOU GOOFED!

I'm not afraid to say I really did fail with this acrylic painting. Don't know why my heart wasn't in it, but I've already scraped the art board so I can use it again. Below read what my intentions were! First photo, below, is just the beginning.

I love the graceful lines of antlers, so I based my sketch on them.
Then I had the idea of painting bright, strong hues in some places, with their pastels in others, thus the unfortunate divider line.

My color scheme was red, yellow, and blue. When I didn't like the smooth effect, I thought texture might help...texture USUALLY helps, right? Right?

Ugh. Sorry I couldn't display a masterpiece here, but everyone has their days. I hereby promise to post a motivational, inspiring, maybe even lovely mixed-media example soon! In the meantime, if you have a nice piece combining both pastels (high-value colors) and their vivid, pure counterparts, please let me know so I can add it here as what TO do! Thanks!

How to Use Saturation or Intensity in a Color Scheme

Saturation

Also known as "intensity," saturation describes the strength of a color with respect to how pure it is. A color's saturation is the degree to which it is different from gray at any given lightness. For instance, colors that are quite grayish are fairly unsaturated compared to brighter, more vibrant colors. 

Pure, bright yellow at left. Duller yellow (with gray, not black, in the gradient at right.

Pure, vivid color is not diluted by gray (or the color's complement). If you wish to tone down a bright, pure color and lower the saturation, add both black and white together (gray), or the color's opposite on the color wheel.

E.g., red is the complement of green, so it would de-saturate green paint (make an olive green, for example) to add some red paint to it. Or, to create a muted barn red, add a bit of green to the red paint!

Tip:

It's often advantageous to paint with a variety of intensities, to avoid a simplistic, "too sweet" effect.

                                                                                                                                   

                                                         A color's complement, if added to that color, will lower its intensity.

Using Value in a Color Scheme

The Definition of Value

The value of a color is based on how light or dark it is. The easiest way to remember this is to picture a "grayscale," which runs from black to white with all the possible light, middle, and dark grays in between. The lighter the color, the higher its value. So a deep, royal blue is a lower value than a light, sky blue (a high value).

Tip: An artist might find it helpful to use a variety of values in a single artwork, including white (or nearly white) and black (or nearly so).

Note: The scales below don't illustrate the lowest values (the colors with  lots of  black added).

How to Mix a Dark Yellow: a Painting Tutorial

Yellow and black together make green. Many of you already know that, so I will keep this little tute brief.

Try deepening yellow with a mixture of burnt and raw umber instead, as shown at right in the photo above. This tip is courtesy of CPi, publishers of The Complete Photo Guide to Creative Painting, co-authored by yours truly!