Basics of Blending

When it comes to smooth transitions in paintings, the most natural and intuitive way to suggest this is by blending. It’s easy to do with oil paint, but because of the fast-drying nature of acrylics, blending has been incredibly challenging with acrylics. Happily, blending is easy with Atelier Interactive, because it is the only acrylic that can be controlled to delay drying so you can blend, simply by using a water sprayer or by using the Unlocking Formula.

Basics of Interactive

Interactive is the world's most advanced acrylic paint, because it makes acrylic painting easier - and who doesn't want that! Because I've been painting with Interactive for over 3 years, I sometimes forget how revolutionary Interactive really is. After all, Interactive becomes touch-dry fairly quickly, so I easily use my standard acrylic painting techniques like layering, glazing and scumbling.

Mixing Skin Tones

Colours for skin tones vary immensely between the home value of a person’s skin as there are areas of high light and shade and subtle changes in colour around various parts of the body. When painting skin it’s very common to find that you use a lot of different colours.
As these are perennial questions we thought we’d start off a discussion because there are many different ways to produce skin colours and one person’s recipe is different from the next.

NATIONAL ART SCHOOL DEGREE SHOW

During the year Chroma has supported the National Art School in Darlinghurst, Sydney, in various ways. As it has done for many years, Chroma joined other businesses and patrons supporting the art world, by offering a painting prize to a graduate at the end of year Degree Show.

Hanna Paine won the Chroma Paints Award with a triptych, one of her works exploring the mystery of experience from a child’s perspective.

Chroma Art Award

Earlier this year Chroma ran an art competition in conjunction with The Art Scene. Competition entrants had to use Atelier Interactive, Jo Sonja’s, Archival Oils or A2 brands of Chroma paint in their works. The competition ran throughout the year and closed on 30th November 2009.

Creative Canvas "Sisters" by Vicki Nicholson

Vicki Nicholson sent us in this innovative "altered art" project and we liked it so much that we created a magazine ad based around it. Vicki also agreed to share the entire step by step project with the Paint Talk community. I hope that this piece inspires you all to get creative with Jo Sonja’s paints and mediums and if you follow the steps below and complete your own “creative canvas” why not add a comment with a photo of your work.

Decorative Art Gallery

Earlier this year we asked a number of decorative artists to send us images of their work to share. Ideas and inspiration come from many different areas in life and an artistic community is so important in keeping motivation going. Greater exposure to decorative art objects and images from other artists opens us up to different techniques. Here at Chroma we are attempting to create an artistic community for artists to take part in. Expression and inspiration is a constant quest for learning new things.

NEW THICKER FORMULA CHROMACRYL

Chromacryl has long been Australia’s favourite brand of school paint. This has been largely due to its high quality and relatively low price. However here at Chroma we are always looking at innovative ways to improve our paints. Even our well established and highly successful brands need an update from time to time so that they can continue to lead the market.

Over the past year we have been working on improving the quality of Chromacryl.

Atelier Color Range Discussion

Chroma is considering changes to the color range of Atelier Interactive and Archival Oils. For some colors, the pigments are no longer available. We also have received a number of requests for additions to the line, and in order to accommodate these requests, some less popular colors would be discontinued.

MANAGING WET AND DRY COLOUR SHIFT

One of the issues with acrylic paints is the change in tonal values when they dry. With most modern artists quality acrylics wet to dry colour shift is less noticeable than it used to be, but it still exists and has to be dealt with. Some acrylic brands claim to have very minimal or even no colour shift at all but unfortunately it is still there. With old style acrylics the strategy is to paint lighter than your eye is telling you, and then darken the area slightly with a glaze after drying.

If you would like to add a comment about your experiences with colour shift please post it below.