Starting Out

Acrylic artists have never before had the opportunity to blend and adjust their paintings wet-in-wet within a time frame they can control, but this advantage involves new processes that need to be learned and followed.

One of the attractions of acrylics has always been speed. Therefore, it is important that in extending working time the ability to do things quickly is not lost, particularly for artists who have developed successful techniques for overcoming the problems of fast drying paints. Otherwise in choosing Interactive you would burden yourself with new, slow processes to learn and lose the techniques you have already mastered to your satisfaction.

Balance

Interactive moves the balancing point which controls drying.

Extended wet-in-wet painting is now possible. However when you want your painting to dry quickly to allow fast layering techniques, use Fast Medium Fixer.

The new paint also behaves traditionally when you use Modelling Compound, Impasto Gel or Binder Medium. Acrylic artists who use these mediums want to get on to the next stage as quickly as possible.

Interactive, as it comes from the tube, is balanced to allow you to work wet-in-wet for as long as you need to, but to make this happen you must replace water being lost through evaporation.

A water spray is the easiest way to do this, but it is difficult to keep a large painting “activated” this way and there are people who just don’t want to use a spray. In this situation using Slow Medium helps.

The dampness or dryness of your painting is just one more thing you need to attend to. The need to continually watch this aspect is greatly reduced if you use Slow Medium, which increases the time frame for working the paint. Even paint which seems dry will reactivate, either with the water spray or simply by working fresh, wet paint into it.

The curing process takes a little longer when you use Slow Medium, but curing in a warm dry place only takes 2-3 days resulting in a “conventional” acrylic painting.

Strategies to Avoid Pain

Gain new technique advantages when using Atelier Interactive with two key mediums.

Fast Medium/Fixer

Allows you to use all of the skills you already have and then explore the new possibilities at will using Slow Medium.
You can use fast techniques in your underpainting and explore Interactive blending as you complete your work, where the extra time available should quickly translate into greater subtlety and complexity in your work.

Slow Medium

Will allow you to explore the blending processes without having to be too aware of the wetness state of your painting. It is needed for large paintings or for very dry conditions, such as painting outdoors. It will give you a full day of wet paint blending when used in conjunction with water spray.

The third strategy, using just paint and the water spray, seems to be more difficult for most people to master:

“Traditional” acrylic techniques are all about painting wet-over-dry and very few acrylic painters, however experienced, have much awareness of the wetness condition of their paintings. They are more used to a water sprayer or damp brush for keeping the paint on their palette useable than they are to spraying the painting itself.

Everyone who tries Atelier Interactive will be a beginner for a while as they explore its possibilities. It makes sense to use Slow Medium until you develop awareness for the wetness of your painting, because you can always bring it back to life, all day.

If you paint in sessions of about 3 hours and your paintings are small enough to be able to reach with a spray, you may find as you get more used to it that you don’t need the Slow Medium as much.

More artists are now using Interactive and we hope that we have reached the stage where most of the processes have been resolved.

Information is terribly important with any unfamiliar situation. When you use the right information Interactive becomes easy to handle.

Atelier Interactive does deliver on its promises, but we realise that sometimes monitoring wetness and using a spray could be a stumbling block. Using Slow Medium removes the problems by giving you more time to adjust, while using Fast Medium/Fixer gives you quick access to the “traditional” fast techniques you are used to and may want to keep.