Acrylic experiments

Last week I played with some new acrylic paints my parents-in-law were kind enough to buy me for Christmas. I didn’t really paint anything, I did pure experimentation with a bunch of acrylic mediums. I had no idea what I was doing as I’ve only ever really used a retarder and nothing else in my paint and I was also using fluid acrylics, a type of acrylic I haven’t really used either.

So I played, and this is what I came up with.

This is wet on wet acrylic combined with a flow medium on unprimed illustration board. While it wasn’t exactly the effect I was looking for, I do think it does have possibilities. The only problem I encountered was unprimed illustration board and a lot of water equals bent illustration board. I ended up having to soak both sides of the board in water – something I could probably avoid with proper preparation or a different mount (funnily enough, studying art through the entirety of school and then doing  graphic design never quite taught me some of the basic technical aspects of fine art…I really should have gone to fine art school). I think this piece could be turned into a painting.

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This one I wouldn’t have normally included as the result due to my poor preparation is pretty awful, but I did like the effect bar the bad priming and I will be investigating it further. This is the same as the above, but on primed illustration board. I know illustration board isn’t the best to use for this kind of thing, but it is what I had at hand. I think I will be investing in some proper board down the track.

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This one also used flow medium, but I think I used it slightly differently. Less water, more paint and less evenly. I like the effect.

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This one uses marbling gel, but I don’t think I used it correctly. I like the effect anyway despite it looking just like paint brushed randomly.

There are a whole pile of swatches here sitting next to me from that afternoon of experimentation, and I also have a larger piece that I haven’t finished that may even turn itself into a painting. I had fun, learnt a few things, and  broke a few laws of chemistry as I managed to chemically disassemble some paint along the way. Physics was really wasted on me at school, I should have done chemistry, then I might have been able to use it for something like this.

Nutty
(mad artist)