Acrylic Mediums

Today’s post is all about working with acrylic mediums.  Mediums are acrylics without the pigment added to it, and are used to alter the behavior and finished product of acrylic paint.  So basically it takes an already versatile medium and adds untold layers of potential into any application.  After one of my professors recommended that I explore working with acrylics, I spent some time doing a little research on the possibilities.  Needless to say, after only a short time spent viewing the work of any number of talented artists, I was hooked!  I headed off for a trip to the art supply store!

The first time I walked to the acrylics section, I have to admit I was suddenly overwhelmed.  Here in front of me were more bottles, tubs, jars, and tubes of different types of acrylic mediums, in several different brands (which mean that two might be similar but still slightly different) than I had imagined possible; things that I had seen in use in my research and things I hadn’t .  Sometimes the names are descriptive, like Fiber Paste or Glass Bead Gel, while others are far more difficult to interpret or guess about the uses for without a little more information, like GAC-100 or other formula names. 

I was lucky enough to find a 6 pack sampler of several different modeling pastes and mediums from Liquitex (though I think that I noticed Golden was promoting a similar type sampler pack with some different mediums included as well).  I also found an Iridescent Medium that I was completely enthralled with.  [I’m not actually promoting that you choose one of these brands over any other, I just want to be as clear about what I found available to me as possible, since I’m still exploring which brands I prefer.]  I also bought one book in particular that I found to be particularly helpful and inspirational, called "Rethinking Acrylic: Radical Solutions For Exploiting The World's Most Versatile Medium" by Patti Brady. 

So the project I’m going to share with you is a rose I painted.  The shimmering of the Iridescent Medium is tricky to capture with a camera, so there are a few different shots of the finished product at the bottom of this post.  These photos were taken one immediately following the other at slightly different angles and positions in the room to try to show how much the actual painting varies in luminescence.

 

The finished piece is acrylic on canvas.  I found a photo of a rose that I really liked, but felt that there was too much noise going on in the background so I opted to focus on the rose and the two most prominent leaves.  As the original was a full-color photo, I considered using an opposing color scheme, but after more consideration, I decided to go with a grey-scale approach.

 

Original Photo Reference

I started by tracing the outline of the rose and leaves using my lightbox, and then scanned the outline into Photoshop, where I greatly increased the size of the picture, cropped the image to heighten the sense of drama, and sectioned it into quarters, printing each quarter onto a page.  After using the light-box again to cover the back of the outlines with white charcoal, I taped the quarters onto a canvas I had prepared with black gesso.  After tracing and transferring the lines in white charcoal onto the canvas, I spent a little time tweaking the outline.

I went over the white charcoal with a white acrylic paint marker, and then went back and intensified the lines with a brush and white acrylic paint.  I attempted to add dimension and style by varying my line weights.

I used a mixture of Liquitex Iridescent Medium, Liquitex Slow-Dri Blending Medium, white acrylic paint, and in some areas a little water to do the fill.  This has given a very luminescent quality to the image, inspiring thoughts of moonlight. I essentially wanted to have a translucent gossamer feel to the overall piece, something completely opposite to the organic, color-filled original picture.