Thursday, September 18, 2008

First Paintings with Golden's New Open Acrylics

sunset painting by Shari Erickson Driveby Sunset 5x7

cinnamon teal ACEO painting by wildlife artist Shari Erickson
Cinnamon Teal 2.5 x 3.5 ACEO
#1 Waterfowl Series


I've just discovered a wonderful new paint seemingly made just for me! Golden's Open Acrylics are perfect for my way of working and I look forward to finding out just how versatile they are. I've always loved oil painting but the resulting headaches from the fumes have kept me away. Over the years my opaque works have been primarily in acrylic and gouache with a short stint with casein. I can already see that having worked with all these other types of paint has been of benefit in becoming familiar with the open acrylics. They don't really mimic any of the others but have a combination of qualities which remind me of all the others. They dry slowly and are very blendable. The colors are more luminescent than traditional acrylics ( in my opinion of course). They work up for me much faster than gouache, which can be very fussy to work with. The relative transparency of each pigment seems to follow along the lines of the other types of paint.

The top painting was done outdoors on a hot day to see how the paint does for plein aire, although this painting is from a blurry photo taken from a car window. It is 5x7 inches on gesso board. I found the open acrylics to be wonderful for working outdoors. They truly did stay wet and didn't even begin to thicken up over the several hours they were exposed to 90 degree heat. My biggest problem was remembering not to rest my hand on my wet painting!

The bottom painting is of a female Cinnamon Teal. It is 2.5 x 3.5 inches on ragboard. I am interested in painting miniatures and decided to try one. I also wanted to see if I could get a decent amount of detail with the open acrylics. They are very similar to tradional acrylics in this regard. This tiny little painting is ACEO size. I may do a series of miniatures for ACEO collectors. Let me know if you are interested in purchasing an original or perhaps a limited edition print. I would charge around $100 for this size to cover my time and effort.

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