How to Make Acrylics Thicker

in this video I'm going to demonstrate how to make acrylics thicker Acrylics are available in a variety of consistencies. There are acrylic inks, fluid acrylics, soft body acrylics, and acrylic gouache. Pretty much any gel will make these paints thicker. I'll cover that more later but for now I'd like to focus on the heavy body acrylics. That's because they're the most common types of acrylics that you find in stores and then artists use. Acrylic gel is basically the same thickness as heavy body acrylic paint. So when you add regular gel to heavy body acrylics, you're just making it more transparent. It really doesn't do anything to make it thicker Fortunately they make thicker acrylic gels. On the left is the regular gloss gel and then on the right is the Liquitex super heavy gel. In this close-up you can see that the super heavy gel on the right is definitely thicker. It has crisper edges and it even looks whiter. I think that's because it has a higher solids content. The white appearance of acrylic gel is temporary. As it dries it begins to clarify. This actually makes your colors a little bit lighter when they're wet and it explains why acrylic paint darkens as it dries. Modeling paste is another option it's basically acrylic gel mixed with marble dust. The only issue is that it makes the colors lighter as you can see here. If you don't like pastel colors you can use modeling paste to texture your canvas, let it dry, and then paint over the top of it. in this still-life painting I use super heavy gel to make the heavy body acrylics thicker. You can see that it makes it glossier and the brushstrokes and a palette knife marks show up more. The gel is on the left and I like to add it to my colors before I begin so it's not too much of a distraction as I'm painting. You can add as much gel to the paint as you like just keep in mind that if you add a lot of it it will make it more transparent. In the beginning I paint mostly with a palette knife but then I start using a brush to create bristle marks in the paint. The palette knife makes it easy to apply a large amount of paint to the canvas at once. It's also easier to clean than a brush you just wipe it off with a rag. In this section I'm using a smaller brush to apply details to the bottle and other areas of the painting. You can use the texture to create more of a form like I did on the apple. You can watch the entire time lapse video by clicking on the card in the right corner. I've also included a link in the description. Another technique is to use thin acrylics for most of the painting and then add gel for the areas where you want to build texture. For example, here's an old bottle of Liquitex soft body acrylics. Straight from the tube it goes on smooth without showing the brush marks. You can add regular gel to make it thick enough to create some impasto with the palette knife. Use thicker gels to create extra thick and pronounced textures. The gels may make the colors mark transparent but it's not as noticeable since you're applying the paint in a thick manner. This is much more economical than buying the same colors in different lines of acrylics. If you're looking for less expensive do-it-yourself solutions I'm going to test joint compound and flour for thickening acrylics. First up is joint compound. It's normally used to seal the joints between sheets of drywall. It's fairly cheap and it's available from home improvement centers. Joint compound is light gray in color. This is Van Dyck Brown in Golden's fluid acrylics. The joint compound has a gritty feel when I mix it with a palette knife but it does make the paint thicker. I also noticed that it lightens the color somewhat. I apply it to a swatch of watercolor paper and allow it to dry. I also mix joint compound with Liquitex Basics which is their a line of student acrylics. Finally I mix it with carbon black heavy body acrylics. I'll compare the results with the white flour after it dries. White flour is used to thicken gravy so I can understand why people want to add it to acrylic paint. I'll use the same colors I use with the joint compound. The first thing I notice is that it doesn't have a gritty feel when I mix it with the palette knife. It also doesn't lighten the color as much as the joint compound. However, after working with it for a while I noticed the mixture becomes sticky and kind of gummy. If you have ever made pizza dough you know that flour becomes more stretchy as you work it. This is not I quality I'm looking for in a paint. It feels a little strange mixing a dry powder into acrylic paint. Acrylics dry rapidly and adding a powder to it will make them dry even faster. Here's a comparison between the dry samples. The joint compound lightens the color much more than the flour and it has some variations in the color. The flour also has a coarse or lumpy appearance. I painted these samples on watercolor paper because it's flexible and I want to test to see if they're prone to cracking So here's the joint compound. Yeah I can hear it cracking. Yep it already cracked. And... see if can bend this flour. That seems to be more... I just heard it snap. Yep the green cracked too - let's try the flour. Yep, see that? So neither of these are really flexible and...look at that large crack. I used palette paper to mix up the medium and it's much thinner so I should be able to bend this to a greater extent and see if it cracks. I'm folding this pretty much in half I don't see anything. Let's try the thicker... and that's folded in half and it's not cracking. It's a very thick area and that's flexing completely. Adding joint compound or flour to acrylic paint may be acceptable when longevity is not a concern. If you enjoyed this video you may be interested in my color theory playlist or my time-lapse painting demos. Thanks for watching and please remember to subscribe!

Channel: Chris Breier

Views: 33,884

Rating: 4.949296 out of 5

Keywords: acrylic painting, acrylic gel, acrylic mediums, impasto

Id: B9LZx623DFg

Length: 6min 33sec (393 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020