Painting with Atelier Interactive All Day

Control your Painting Process

Fast drying speed has always been an advantage of artists’ acrylics, but at the same time it has been their most serious disadvantage because artists don’t get enough time to develop their ideas with the wet-in-wet techniques which are used by oil painters.
Interactive offers control over the drying time so that artists can paint wet-in-wet for as long as they need to, making the subtlety so easily achieved with oils available to acrylic artists. Acrylics dry by water evaporation and Interactive has been designed to be water-retentive to slow the process by interacting with water sprays.

To control the drying time the artist needs to do the following for STUDIO PAINTING:

Slow Drying

We have identified Atelier Slow Medium as the most important medium for Atelier Interactive if you want to further extend the working time.

The more versatile a medium is, the more difficult it is to describe, particularly when this relates to a painting process which varies from person to person. It really makes more sense to say, “This is the most useful medium for slow painting and you need to find out how to use it.”

Here are some pointers:

• It is not thick, but it is very concentrated: small amounts will produce a smooth mid-viscosity paint. Remember that this will tack up and need the water spray as the process moves on, so you need to be aware of the balance between the medium already on the painting and what you may be planning to add as you go along.
• The effect can be cumulative in a painting session when the medium is as “interactive” as this one is (whereas traditional mediums just dry and get buried under the next layer of paint). This medium will tend to dissolve into the next layer and build up too much if you use more. There is no fat-over-lean rule so you can use just paint or paint and water in the next layer or try using medium diluted 50/50 with water if you have used a lot in your first layer.
• By starting with a concentrated medium like Slow Medium, there are more variables that you can introduce with a wet brush or your water spray than if the medium was weaker. However, you should try a small batch pre-mixed 50/50 with water in case it suits your needs better.

Fast Drying

When you want to use traditional fast painting techniques just paint as usual and use the Atelier Fast Medium/Fixer. This medium toughens the paint film and also hastens drying time. Also use any source of dry warmth to hasten drying. Another approach is to 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.