The Many Possibilities of Painting with Acrylic

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Experimenting with various acrylic mediums and paints on multiple surfaces can push you toward improvisation — and insight.

There are unlimited ways to use acrylic paints and mediums on various surfaces and with different techniques. There is a gold mine to explore! My intention here: to work on different surfaces and, on each surface, to use different pigments with different applications, tools, and processes — and that’s exactly what I did. That brings us back to paint, brush/tool, and surface — the holy trinity of painting with acrylic.

Invoking that trinity in different ways automatically stokes the creative fires within, unleashing the imagination to probe, experiment, and follow new avenues of expression with abandon.

Dynamics of Paint

In Pouring the Blues, which was executed with Liquitex pouring medium mixed with Golden fluid acrylics and Liquitex soft body acrylics on canvas, innovation, lack of control, and chaos collided, and then harmony prevailed. I became glued into my plastic gloves! My friend and photographer, Richard Gehrke, had to pull me out of them.

As you tilt the canvas, the paint/pouring medium moves. It can also move as it lies flat. On its own, the pouring medium creates incredibly gorgeous and unexpected designs with the acrylic paint.

In the next exercise, I began with Golden fluid acrylics on Arches 140-lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper. I added calligraphy and stamping, and then enhanced the composition with Liquitex black and gray gesso. To me, 2017 represents my hope regarding the situation in the world during that year: chaos brought to wholeness, cohesion, and peace.

Having Fun with Tar Gel

Golden clear tar gel is a 100-percent acrylic polymer dispersion colorless gel with a resinous consistency. What a medium! Above the surface (Arches 300-lb. cold-pressed paper), I dripped the tar gel from a palette knife in sweeping vertical and horizontal movements. I created a labyrinth of designs, did an underpainting and then painted over that with Holbein black gesso. Then I developed the rest of Trippin’ with Holbein mat acrylics, markers, and Daniel Smith Luminescent iridescent acrylics.

I painted Scratching the Surface on watercolor board that I’d gessoed to create texture. Then I layered many brushstrokes over that and then added more texture by drawing through the gesso and adding other layers. After those applications had dried, I brought out the textures by adding layers of transparent paint and contrasting opaque gessos by Holbein.

Allowing Content to Emerge by Way of Mediums

In The Secret History, I used Atelier Interactive acrylics and glazing medium and Golden crackle paste. My intention was to experiment until the content became clear. I began by applying Golden crackle paste and allowing it to dry for four days. After the paste dried, I applied soft glazes to the parts of the surface not covered by the paste. I watched the glazes create a softness that contrasted with the texture of the crackle paste.

Holbein red gesso seemed a good choice to cover the paste, as the gesso provided the ultimate contrast to the softness of the glazes. Mixing abstraction with something quasi-realistic is common in most of my paintings, which explains the photographic representation on the right.

As I worked on the crackle paste covered with red gesso, I added small areas of cobalt teal and gray to break up the bright red expanse. Drawing with charcoal, I added faces, covering them somewhat with paint until they became almost obscured. Content arose through the act of painting. Soft patches of Golden acrylic medium gold mica flakes shimmer in small areas throughout the work.

Creating Imaginary Scenes Through Textures

I always ask myself “What if?” For my next venture (Studio Mysteries), I combined the following: Holbein fluid acrylics; mulberry paper collage I’d previously painted with fluid acrylics and then overpainted with Golden acrylic medium gold mica flakes; Holbein gray gesso and opaque mat acrylics; and, finally, Cretacolor water-soluble pencils. I began with a loose, transparent, pale underpainting of blues and reds, making sure I spattered paint and water across the surface to add texture. I drew the figure first, then geometric shapes in the background, which later would suggest paintings.

Painting over the drawing allowed me to leave the skin of the figure the color of the background. Building shapes and designs around the edges of the paper, I stamped with gray gesso in areas, gluing the collage papers with Golden gel medium and then painting with acrylic medium gold mica flakes. The multi-media approach and the alteration of transparent versus opaque creates mood.

Geometric textural sequences reign in Arizona Dreams, which was first coated with Atelier liquid gesso primer. I used Golden light molding paste, Liquitex sand paste and fabric paste, collage and stamping. I also painted with Golden fluid acrylics and Atelier Interactive acrylics. On dried texture that I’d sometimes drawn through, scraped, and stamped, I applied color and let it dry. Glazing came later and more opaque acrylics from Atelier. The result: parts of the painting appear to recede; others come forward, like many rock formations in Arizona.

Lifting with Mr. Clean Sponge

A first for me: painting on an Ampersand Aquabord. For Scheherazade’s Secret Garden (top of this article), I began with a washy underpainting. The clayboard surface is wonderful for lifting watercolors, which I did with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser sponge. I mixed hard and soft edges easily on the surface and combined an exotic figure in green to augment the “unreality” of the painting. To extend the ambiguity of forms and edges, I buffed parts of the surface.

The ability to play with the paint without demanding a certain outcome was a gift this surface gave me. I expect many more adventures on Ampersand Aquabord.

Expanding the Range of the Still Life

Imagining a composition that combined elements of still life and ornate fabrics, I remembered the wonderful painter who was also a gifted writer, Harriet Shorr, who died last year. Her oversized paintings in oil were bold in color and bright with light. A sheet of Arches 140-lb. cold- pressed paper was the perfect substrate for the bright watercolors and intense washes I used for In Memory of Harriet Shorr.

As Joseph Campbell remarked to Bill Moyer on the 1988 TV documentary, The Power of Myth, “When you get to the end, you realize you are at the beginning.” What a perfect way for me to conclude as I continue to explore the possibilities of painting with acrylic.

Materials

• Surfaces: Ampersand Aquabord, Arches cold pressed 140- and 300-lb. paper
• Mediums: Atelier glazing medium and liquid gesso primer, Golden crackle paste, clear tar gel, acrylic medium gold mica flakes, light molding paste and gel medium; Liquitex pouring medium, sand paste and fabric paste
• Gesso: Holbein and Liquitex
• Paints: Atelier Interactive acrylics, Daniel Smith Luminescent acrylics, Golden fluid acrylics, Holbein mat and fluid acrylics; Liquitex soft body acrylics; QoR watercolors
• Miscellaneous: charcoal, markers, mulberry paper, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, Cretacolor water-soluble pencils

Betsy Dillard Stroud is an award-winning artist, author and public speaker.

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