Tutorial: How to Paint With Transparent Acrylics
- 1). Select a sheet of heavy-weight watercolor paper to paint on. Use smooth, hot-pressed paper for finely detailed, realistic work. Paint on toothy, rough paper for impressionistic, expressionist and abstract works. Prime a canvas or Masonite panel with three successively thinner layers of gesso. Sand between each coat for a smooth painting surface. Draw your composition in pencil directly onto your canvas or paper painting surface.
- 2). Add a dab of paint to a sheet of glass used as a palette. Mix the paint with a palette knife until it's liquid enough to stir around with a stiff-bristled brush. Experiment with different colors to see which ones lend themselves to transparency. Select colors such as alizarin crimson, rose madder, thalo blue and green, ultramarine and cobalt blues that readily become transparent when diluted with water or other thinning mediums. Experiment with acrylic glazing liquids, gels, flow-aid additives and gloss or matte acrylic thinning medium.
- 3). Mix up a puddle of color. Dip a soft, absorbent, natural animal-hair brush into the fluid paint. Let it soak up half the length of the bristles, taking care to keep the colors out of the brush's ferrule, the metal part that holds the bristles. Transfer the paint onto your paper or canvas by brushing on large, broad washes of transparent color. Start with muted, highly keyed, lighter colors. Block in your background and define the pictures basic forms with your first layers of paint.
- 4). Use graded washes to add depth and visual interest to your painting. A graded wash is a thin layer of paint that varies in hue and value. Add more color at one end of the wash, gradually adding additional water as you paint the wash. Make tonally graded washes by adding lighter tints and darker shades of color to the puddle of watery paint as you push it around the paper with your brushes. Work quickly when painting wet-in-wet, a technique of painting over layers of paint before they have dried.
- 5). Build up the tonal structure of your picture by arranging the lights and darks to suggest the effects of light and shadow. Superimpose several layers of pure color one over another until you get just the right colors you're looking for. Overlay three or four washes for a luminous effect, as your colors optically mix by the reflection of light passing through the transparent washes of color.