Acrylic Adventures for Watercolor Artists: Transparent to Opaque and Back Again

With today’s beautifully saturated acrylic paint products, a watercolor painter can easily transition from watercolor into acrylic paints while maintaining a watercolor style of painting.  In other words, if you think of acrylic paint as something that must be used in a thick, opaque application you might be in for a nice surprise.  Acrylics can be applied to paper or canvas (or most any support) and can achieve the same level of transparency and glowing color as watercolor.  And, most importantly, acrylics hold some wonderful advantages for the watercolor artist.

One of the advantages of acrylic paint is the range of opacity from transparent to opaque.  Because they harden and cannot be lifted once the paint dries, you can lay down color in whatever style you prefer.  Using plenty of water, acrylic paint can give the appearance of wet watercolor washes.  Once dry, you can go back into the painting and add opaque paint to build your design.  The acrylic advantage is the way you can paint light colors back into your painting, utilizing a mix of light or white opaque paint.  For a watercolor painter this concept is, at first, a departure from the norm because traditionally watercolorists must either save the white of the paper or lose any chance at glowing color.  Not any longer!  Now you can be a watermedia painter and bring back glowing color any time you want.  In the painting lesson below, you will be introduced to the acylic advantage for watercolor artists.

Here is a painting exercise that will prove acrylic’s versatility as a watermedia paint.

Prepare your paper.  With a large brush, saturate a piece of watercolor paper starting from the bottom and gradually brushing to the top.  Working with lots of water on a big brush, apply water from left to right at the bottom of the page, or right to left.  Work your way up the page gradually and be generous with your water.  Starting at the bottom eliminates the possibility of a drip of water running down the paper from the top, causing a water streak mark.

Once the water has soaked in for a few minutes, choose a bright, transparent color and apply it on the entire paper.  Use this as your underpainting.

From this glowing beginning, once your underpainting is dry, paint your composition in a watercolor technique.  Draw a pencil sketch on your dry underpainting if you wish.  Use your acrylics and begin to build your painting just as you would with a watercolor.  You might even try building the painting until it has lots of darks, more than if you were doing a watercolor.  The underglow will unify the painting.

Now comes the acrylic advantage.  Certain light acrylic pigments such as whites and Naples Yellow have enough opacity to provide coverage of what lies beneath it, even when mixed with other colors.  This means you can mix beautiful opaque colors and, once the previously painted layer of paint is dry, you can apply opaque light or white mixes on top of the previously laid-down paint.  Now you are truly “sculpting out” your composition, working light to dark, dark to light, back and forth, with little concern for error since you can easily return to the painting and change any passage.  In this way, you are truly taking charge of your acrylics.  You are a watermedia painter.

Watercolor Discovery Part 1: How to Set Up Your Palette

Watercolor Discovery Part 1:  How to Set Up Your Palette

There is nothing more important to a painter than to know your materials like the back of your hand.  In doing so, when you sit down to paint your masterpiece you can allocate all your attention to your creative process without the distraction of wondering how to mix this or that color.  In order to know your paints, you must lay them onto your palette with forethought.  If you invest the time to understand your paint, you will avoid pitfalls such as muddy color and non-harmonious colors.  Knowledge is power.  By knowing your paint, you will gain advantages such as being able to lift paint off the paper to create highlights because you will know which pigments will lift and which will not lift because they stain the paper.  Ideally, it is helpful to learn your colors so well that you know how to mix and match any color you could ever need.

If you haven’t yet set up your palette, give some thought to how you wish to lay out your colors.  One of the best methods of organizing your palette has been developed by Stephen Quiller.  His book “Color Choices” is a comprehensive study of watermedia color theory.  Equally as helpful, he has produced the Quiller Color Wheel, available at most Art Supply stores and online retailers.  The Quiller Color Wheel is an ideal map to follow when laying out your palette.  This way you will discover a system to mix your colors and achieve predictable results.  Steve has spent an entire career building on valuable historical color theory research, and if you begin your watercolor research with this foundation of knowledge and expertise, you are starting with the best.

While you attempt to make a decision where to place your colors on your palette, lay the tubes into the paint tray. Since it is important to learn the names of your colors it is important to label the colors on your palette once you’ve made your final placement decision.  With professional quality art materials, there is an industry standard by which most colors are named.  Cobalt Blue is Cobalt Blue, no matter who the manufactures is.  One exception to this rule: the group of “phthalo” (or phthalocyanine) colors, usually phthalo green and phthalo blue.  These colors--extremely bright, staining colors--are often identified by the manufacturer’s name.  In other words, you will find them labeled “Richeson Blue” or “Winsor Newton Green.”

At this point, once you are certain about the placement of colors on your palette, write the names of the colors onto the palette with a permanent fine-tip marker so that you can read the name of the paint once the palette is filled with paint. 

It is now time to fill your palette by putting a generous amount of paint in each compartment.  Your palette will remain wet for a day or two, but will gradually harden.  One terrific aspect of watercolor is how transportable it is.  The palette will dry overnight, yet you can easily reconstitute it with a drop or squirt of water whenever you have the opportunity to paint.

Coming up:  Part 2 Watercolor Discovery: Learn Your Colors