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| Our November Sea Scape Project |
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| My Display for December's Painting Demonstration |
If you are out and about on Saturday afternoon in Oregon
City, I will be demonstrating acrylic painting with Grumbacher Acrylic paints and medium at
the Oregon City Michaels from 1-3 PM to promote my weekly Acrylic Painting
Workshops.
“Acrylic Painting!”
you ask? Yes, here I am, an oil painter of 20 plus years teaching an acrylics painting
class. The economy plus a personal desire to explore the medium for plein air
reasons have urged me to jump at a job opening for a Michael’s Associate /Grumbacher-
Chartpack Acrylics Painting Instructor for the Oregon City Michaels.
My new job as an acrylics instructor has proven to be both
fun and profitable. Thank you Lord. I hope some of my friends who have asked when
I would start teaching again because of their interest in lessons will try out
f my workshops. Classes are weekly, Wednesday nights, 5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Further information about the workshops is available at my website. AnnaLancasterFineArt.com
Do I have some concerns as a long time oil painter? Initially
yes, so I did some research. For the saved expenses on
supplies I find some very nice satisfying results. Here are some interesting
facts about acrylic paints. Much of this information is from an excellent article
Golden paints published a great e-article on their website about the durability
and properties of oil and acrylic paints. Here are the links to that original information.
http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicaldata/faq/i_prod.php
http://www.goldenpaints.com/justpaint/jp12article1.php
Now as a Grumbacher Acrylic Painting instructor, I feel the
need to recues myself of a conflict of interest. I’m not intentionally
promoting Golden Acrylics over Grumbacher Acrylics but I need to give credit
about where I found the information
Acrylics are a very durable medium. They don’t have the same
proven track record because they were developed in the last century during
WWII. The technology has not been around as long as the technology of oil based
paints so there is no real time observation of how acrylic paints hold up
beyond 70 years. There are ways of lab testing all painting medium for UV
exposure, heat, cold, elements and moisture. Acrylic and oils both hold up well
in those conditions. An exception is how acrylic paints hold up in extreme cold
which can affect their ability to setup and cure when they have warmed again.
Acrylics dry so quickly, you wouldn’t be refrigerating or freezing the paint to
continue work with the same pallet as you would with an oil pallet. My guess is
that you wouldn’t want to plein air paint with acrylics in a snow storm.
I read in American Artist you shouldn’t freeze your oil
paint because it could affect the adherence but I’ve oil painted for 30 years,
freezing my oil pallets and my oldest paintings look as beautiful as the day I
finished them. But I guess in 130 years I may retract that assertion; )
Only time can be the real judge. Oil paintings that are
several centuries have shown that elements can cause oil paint to crack over
time as the paint becomes more brittle and looses ability to adhere to the
painting surface. In laboratory testing, acrylic paint surfaces where found to
be more porous than oils and subject to absorbing dirt in ways that oils are
not. Time will reveal if that will affect the paints durability.
When it comes to how you prime your canvas for oil painting
there are definitely some issues of acrylic vs. oil. Oil priming with ground
for oil painting allows for both chemical and physical bonding to take place so
an oil primed canvas is more stable for oil painting than an acrylic gessoed
canvas. Only a physical bond can take place between oil paint and acrylic
gesso.
Linen is less subject to rot than cotton duck canvas. So
your most stable surface to paint oils on is a linen canvas primed with lean
oil based primer with ground as opposed to acrylic, water based gesso with
ground.
For my plein air painting friends, If you use acrylic as
your under painting, you’ve got to first coat the under painting with mat
medium or even better, clear acrylic gesso that dries semi transparent but has
more ground than acrylic mat medium. Just acrylic paint from the tube will dry
to slick for a physical bond to take place between the oil and acrylic. Clear
gesso does cloud the color which defeats the purpose of the under painting, in
my opinion so personally I would opt for the acrylic mat medium for oil glaze
over the acrylic. If the under painting is a layout for oil impasto, I would
use the clear gesso because of the increased amount of ground.
I currently don’t use the medium of acrylic for my under
paintings. I only combine medium for my specific mixed media pieces which are a
whole different animal. For now, I’m content to keep my oil paintings pure oil
and my acrylic paintings pure acrylic.
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| Our 1st Landscape Project |