Acrylic Paint Colors

Acrylic colors are a kind of quick drying paint that is actually a pigment suspended in an emulsion of acrylic polymer. The most unique characteristic of acrylic paints is that you can dilute it with a variety of fluids; like water, gels or pastes to give you a finished painting that resembles an oil or water color painting. Although acrylic colors are a modern paint color, they are very widely used because of their quick drying quality and it is availability of wide variety of colors.

Difference Between Oil Colors and Acrylic Colors

The basic difference between acrylic paint colors and oil paints is the time required for it to dry on the canvas. Oil paints require a much longer time for drying. This proves to be a boon in disguise for painters who need time to blend colors intricately and produce even glazes over underpaintings. Painters usually wait for a week or two for the colors to fully dry in an oil painting. Acrylic colors on the other hand dry up much faster and a painting dries in a matter of minutes. This turns out to be advantageous to those painters who work more quickly.

Oil paints require the addition of a solvent, such as linseed oil or turpentine to thin the paints so that it can be applied to the painting. Acrylic paints on the other hand are made of pigments that are combined with acrylic resin and mineral oils. The biggest difference between oil paints and acrylic paints is that oil paintings turn increasing yellow and brittle. A coat of clear varnish is required, to prevent the oil painting from turning yellow. Acrylic colors do not suffer from any such disadvantages. Before using oil paints it is necessary to prime the canvas with a thin wash of paint to prevent the canvas from cracking. The use of a primer is not required for acrylic paint colors and they can be directly applied on the canvas.

How to Mix Acrylic Paints

Mixing acrylic colors to get a desired color requires a fair amount of practice and with trial and error method you will be quite adept at it. Before discussing how to blend the acrylic colors to get a new color you should first know all about basic acrylic paints. The three basic colors are red, blue and yellow which are also known as the primary colors. These primary acrylic colors when mixed with each other in different proportions will create the secondary colors. The secondary colors are green, purple and orange. Mixing and blending the secondary colors will give you the tertiary colors.

There are four basic ways by which you can mix acrylic paint colors. The first is by mixing two or three colors on your palette with the help of a brush to get the color of your choice. When you get the required shade or hue of color on your palette just use it for painting on your canvas. This method allows you to experiment and play around with different colors and their proportions to arrive at a color which is exactly to your liking. For example if you are want the color green by mixing the acrylic colors blue and yellow then there you can mix them in such a way that you get a blue dominated or yellow dominated green.

Another acrylic paint color mixing technique is called glazing or tinting. This technique is done by applying a thin glaze of one color on the canvas and allowing it to dry. Now another color is painted over the first color. Both the acrylic paints merge giving a different hue. Although the end result may not be as uniform as when you use a palette to mix colors in can nevertheless be used for painting subtle variations like a sunset or the shimmering water of a lake.

One more acrylic paint color mixing technique that is widely used is to simultaneously apply both the colors in approximately the same area to attain a different color. This can be done by applying the colors directly on the canvas with the help of two brushes in rapid strokes or short flat strokes. The last acrylic paint color mixing method is to use a thin layer of both colors side by side on the canvas and blending them together. This acrylic painting technique is very difficult as the acrylic pains dry quite fast and it requires a great deal of skill.

So this was all about acrylic colors and how they can be mixed to create a new shade. Although traditionally oil paint was more used as a medium of painting, more and more painters are using acrylic paint colors. Notable among them are Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Robert Motherwell and founder of the pop art movement, Andy Warhol.