Acrylic Paints & Recommendations

Hi, my name is Nina Weiss, and I'm here to talk to you about paint, specifically acrylic paint. So we absolutely love using acrylic paint. It has wonderful qualities, it's got easy cleanup, and it can do so many things. What we're going to talk about is what kind of acrylic paints should you look for and why? So let's just talk about paint in general. So every paint has three components. You've got a filler, a binder, and pigment. Pigment is pigment and it's really the most expensive element to your paint. So you've got your pigment, you've got a filler, which in acrylic is really also the binder and that is your polymer. And that is what makes acrylic acrylic. So the polymer is a plastic and it helps to seal the paint. And that's why we love to work with it because as you paint with the acrylic, it's gonna seal itself and you can go over it, you can work layers, you can make corrections, but that will work best if you get a good quality paint. So let's talk about what makes a good quality paint. As I mentioned before, you're looking for a paint that is going to give you the best possible and the most pigment. Your pigment in your paint is what makes the color really sing. So we're looking for a good quality paint. Let's talk about what that is or we could talk about what that is not. So when you buy a good quality paint, you might have a little bit of sticker shock, but it's worth it and I'm going to tell you why. As I said before, the amount of pigment is what makes your paint more expensive. There are other kinds of paints that you could buy, at let's say a non-art store or a craft store. If you can, purchase a artist-quality paint and not a student quality. How do you know what you're getting? Well, some tubes will actually say professional quality and not student quality. Sometimes it will have the brand name and it will say studio quality. It might come in a squeezy bottle. You might find a craft paint, which is designed to work with fabrics. Let's not use that. You might find another kind that is just for arts and crafts. And what is going to happen to these paints? And here's the key. You're gonna find that the application is very transparent. We wanna use a paint that has enough filler to be opaque. What does that mean? That means that when you brush it on, you're not seeing the white of the paper, you're not seeing streaks, and you get good coverage. Okay? So we're gonna skip the studio quality, we're gonna skip the craft paints, and we're gonna skip the fabric paints. So what does a good quality paint look like? It looks a lot like this. Okay? So it's going to be in either a tube or a tub and I much prefer using the tube because in that way, you can squeeze out the amount that you want. So my favorite brands of acrylic paint are by Golden and by Liquitex. Sometimes you'll see that it is called Heavy Body, and that is going to give you the consistency and the coverage that you want. Okay? So then we know what kind of paint we wanna buy. We wanna buy professional grade acrylic paint, preferably in a tube. Now, let's look at the labels. That can get a little confusing as well. So when I give my students material lists, I ask for very specific colors. For instance, I'm asking for cadmium red, not cadmium red light and not cadmium red hue. So it's really important to understand that. If it says cadmium red light, it is going to be lighter and it's not going to be your spectrum value primary cadmium red. So your cadmium red tube is going to look a lot like this. So this is my recommendation. This is a cadmium red, medium. It's not light and it's not hue. Okay? So read your tubes carefully. Now, what I recommend and what I teach with is a warm and a cool of each primary color. So your primary color is cadmium red. Your primary color is lemon yellow. Your primary color is cyan blue and it even says primary cyan. So with these paints, you'll be able to get consistency of color, you'll get even opaque coverage, and you'll be able to use less paint. And so in the end, you will be not spending more money, but spending your money wisely. The other thing you wanna think about with acrylic paint is when we mix water into it, we're sort of reducing its ability to be acrylic paint. It becomes more transparent. So we add in something called GAC. I know that's a funny word. It's spelled G-A-C. This is GAC 100. And the GAC allows your paint to flow better and it extends it, but it adds back in the acrylic. So basically, add too much water and your acrylic becomes transparent. Put in the GAC and your acrylic remains acrylic because you've added back in the polymer. As I said, these paints are gonna seal. You can go over in layers, and you're gonna get much better coverage than you would with say like a student quality paint. So have fun with your paints and you'll do a much better job and you'll be much happier with the good quality professional acrylic paints.