Series 7 – Painting With Thinned Down Acrylic Paints

In my continuing painting adventure to try many different methods of painting with my art, I decided this time to try a Series 7 painting with thinned down acrylic paints.   I have always loved acrylic paints.  When I was a child and took private art classes, the only choice was oil paints for a permanent painting medium.  This was before acrylic paints had been introduced .  Oil paints are beautiful with rich and luxurious qualities , but have to be used with turpentine.  Turpentine gives me headaches and makes me feel sick when I am exposed to it for long periods of time.  It was a constant battle because I did not want to give up painting but felt sick when I had to smell the turpentine.  I remember when acrylic paints were first advertised, I was so excited to hear that there was an alternative to oil paints.  I also liked the fact that acrylic paints dry quickly and was intrigued when I heard that acrylic paints can be thinned down to transparent consistency like watercolor. Most of the artists I have seen that paint with acrylic paints usually use it in thicker applications as with oil painting.  I had always wanted to explore this but never had.

After finding a pack of seven stretched canvases  12 x 12 inches on sale and making the purchase, I decided this would be a perfect outlet for this creative project.  I used three paints, cadmium yellow medium, cobalt blue and Windsor blue on all seven canvasses.  I tried alternate methods of diluting the paint and then applying to a wet canvas.  Sometimes I let the extra liquid paint run in drips and I would control them by tilting the canvas.  Most of the time the results were positive.  I did run into problems on one canvas and it became too dark in areas.  The advantage of acrylic paints is that they are permanent and if you let the application dry you can paint over it without the colors combining as they do with watercolors.  I was intrigued by this process and plan to use it again in future paintings and trying some other painting methods with it such as using thick and thin paints, controlled and uncontrolled.