Tear off palettes remove the necessity to clean up a messy palette at the end of a painting session. Recommended to begin with would be a couple of different shapes of palette knife from the Jackson’s Extra Crank Offset Painting Knives or RGM Palette Knives ranges, as they are long lasting and offer just the right amount of flexibility in their blades. They are available in a range of shapes and sizes, one or two in your armoury will significantly help keep your colour mixing organised. In comparison to brushes they are much easier to remove paint from, one wipe on a rag and your knife will be clean for the next colour mix. They are also great for scraping wet paint away from your painting or palette, and mixing colours on your palette. They can be used as an alternative to brushes, facilitating thick impasto applications of colour that can either be completely smooth or highly textured. Palette knives are incredibly useful for heavy body and medium body acrylic painting. L-R: RGM Extra Large Palette Knives, RGM Palette Knives, Jackson’s Extra Offset Crank Painting knives, Jackson’s XXL Painting knives To some this means that they’re easier to work with and serve as a great introduction to the medium, to others it’s better to dive in with the very best paints to open yourself up to more dynamic results in your work. Student grade paints will have a uniform sheen when dry and each colour will behave in much the same way. The characteristics of the pigments are less noticeable in how the paints behave (such as drying times, differences in sheen and texture from colour to colour). Artist grade paints may be very slightly less pigmented than the professional ranges, but still have impressive colour saturation. The finest, purest pigments and acrylic binders are formulated for these high end paints. This means paints have intense colour saturation and show off the characteristics of the pigments used. The best are professional grade paints, these have the optimum pigment to binder ratio. Ranges of paints are often referred to by their quality. Unless you have a clear idea of specific colours you wish to work with, there are many acrylic paint sets available that conveniently offer a good spectrum of colours to use for any subject matter. You just need to start painting as it’s only then that you’ll begin to discover what your preferences are in terms of paint consistency, colour saturation and techniques, allowing you to make more informed decisions about how you go about adding to your colours and tools. The good news is when starting out, deciding on any acrylic paint is the right decision. Conversely you could thicken a fluid paint with a paste or gel to use it for impasto techniques, and mix it with a fluid acrylic medium to turn your colour into a glaze. For example, if you were working on a painting that had both passages of heavy impasto as well as some transparent, delicate glazes, you could mix in a fluid medium to your heavy body paint to increase its transparency and fluidity. With the aid of the many acrylic mediums, gels and pastes available, it is possible to modify the characteristic of the paints you are working with to allow them to adapt to other techniques, and mould to your own particular way of working. However the adaptability of acrylic paint means that there are no hard and fast rules. Right hand image, from top to bottom: Golden Heavy Body, Golden Open Acrylic Medium Body, Liquitex Soft Body, Golden Fluid, Golden High Flow, Daler Rowney FW Acrylic Ink, Turner Acrylic Gouache, Molotow Acrylic Marker pen, Montana Gold Spray Paint
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