Fast Painting Techniques

Artists with finely honed skills using old style fast drying paint may want to incorporate fast segments into their new paintings: just add Atelier Fast Medium/Fixer and you have fast drying paint. Fast Medium/Fixer can also be used as an isolation varnish, especially before glazing or scratch back, if you don’t want to wait for the underpainting to cure properly.

Glazing

Glazing is now very easy because you have the time and ability to control the process by wiping back and lifting out where necessary.

Painting Wet-Over-Dry

It has never been difficult to overpaint with acrylics. You have to learn to blend edges and you are off and away. The main reason to use Interactive is because of its ability to work wet-in-wet over an extended time. However if a painting is not finished in one session the artist needs to know that it is easy to carry on later so one can feel free and easy about stopping and starting.

Everyone has different work patterns. You may stop because you are tired or because you can’t decide what to do next. Also with the new wet-in-wet situation it is possible to get bogged down and you have to know when wet-over-dry would work better.

Touch-dry but uncured Interactive is very absorbent and water hungry. This makes it easy to get the necessary fusion and integration between the dry painting and the fresh wet paint, but you need to know how to handle the absorbency situation: you will need moisture.

The absorbency of the paint film is similar to watercolour paper. A good method is to wet the surface with a large wet brush or a water spray and then wipe off the excess with a rag. The dry paint will then become a water reservoir which accepts edge blending and softening very readily.

Another approach is to apply fresh paint, which tacks up very quickly because the dry paint is so absorbent. You can then use a water spray to soften edges.

As you continue to paint, you will have a new wet-in-wet layer and your new session is done wet-in-wet.

With Interactive the painting process is different, so you need to read these suggestions carefully and you will have a better opportunity to continue and develop your painting techniques.

Overpainting & Tonal Change

If you dampen the painting when it is in it's tender stage (i.e. no longer workable wet-in-wet, but too newly done to be cured - say next day) with the intention of overpainting, you will notice a phenomenon called ‘blanching’. Blanching involves mainly light values with a lot of Titanium White. When moistened these areas will lift in tone noticeably by up to ½ a value (on the 10 tone scale), while the mid tones and darks will just look damp or wet.

You can take advantage of this temporary situation: if you want to make corrections you can match your wet paint to the damp paint, or if you want to proceed with more tonal lift you can estimate how much extra titanium you will need so that the light areas dry back to what you really wanted.

Blanching is useful because it is easier to make overpainting merge and tie-in with what is there, but as the painting cures the blanching diminishes and then stops happening (in about 3 days), so you need to keep going day-to-day.

Note: If you only spray lightly you will get a spatter effect where you have juxtaposed areas of wet and dry paint. It is better to wet the whole surface and swab off excess water before starting to overpaint.