Acrylic Colours - a magic medium for Artists

Acrylic Colours first arrived in the art scene in 1962 when they were called Standard Formula. These paints are quite thick in a buttery consistency just like oil colours. Hence it was mainly for palette knife work and is good to build up a terrific amount of relief work called Impasto.

The advantage of acrylics over oils is that oils take months to dry but acrylic paints take only a few hours even if it is applied in thick amounts.

In addition to using palette knives , brushes may also be used.

Then came an excellent extension to the Standard Formula stable matte called Flow Formula. This is better to use with the brush. However it takes a bit longer to dry than the Standard Formula.

I use a retarder where I can in order to slow the drying process if I want to make a long drawn painting where I may not be able to cope with the quick-drying typical of acrylic paints. A paste called Texture Paste could be used for building heavy Impasto.

Nylon brushes of very high quality is best for acrylic. The Stay-wet palette was introduced to keep paint wet indefinitely which was such a breakthrough and helped save paint from drying quickly.

There is a magic in using Acrylic Paints for a creatively charged artist.
Acrylic Paint facilitates creating a painting right at the moment when the artist gets that urge. Such a painting has more value as it is made with more meaning with uninterrupted and truthful expression of feelings on the canvas.

Another advantage is that as soon as you have made the whole composition and you need to work over, you could immediately start from the other side of the painting without any fear of the under-painting getting in the way as by now it is safely dry.

Thus a painting can be created by the artist filled with inspiration rather than be controlled by having to wait for the paint to get dry like in the oil painting process, where the initial emotion is not the same as when the artist has come back to it in a day or two.

With acrylic, a piece started by (say) the evening hours could easily be completed by nightfall.

Artist's Acrylic colours are made of the same pigments used in Oil Colours. Instead of the pigment in drying oil or water soluble as in watercolours, these semi-permanent pigments come in a transparent, water emulsion of acrylic polymer resin.

Sorry for the technical terminologies, but this is an interesting fact to understand so we see how valuable acrylic paintings are actually.

The term polymer means joining together small molecules called monomers into lengthy chemical chains which form plastic materials. These convert into milky white, water emulsions which will dry as a crystal clear film once the water has evaporated.

That's about it on the tech art talk. I found this interesting to think about when I was pulling out my acrylic material to make a quick painting.

I hope it was informative to you as it was for me refreshing my memory of yet another amazing medium of art.

Will be back soon with another flavour of art and creatives. Pleased to see you here ! Happy Painting!!

An Artist from the Animal Kingdom - Should we be worried for the right reasons?

As an independent who seeks to thrive in an ever-growing competition of today... a look at this video amuses me!

Should I worry that this guy here has a better niche following than some of us? Or worry about who is making this a niche market which surely should be lucrative not for the artist.

Just a couple of days ago one of my associates were mentioning about these amazing artists with their skills in Thailand. That would be a painting made by an Elephant.

Today as I was making my routine weekend Google of a few pending research topics, I was amazed to come across this Elephant guy make this piece ... which looked like a piece of art (to humans) or a master-piece? Though am not sure what it looks like to the artist here.



I am in awe wondering how on earth is it able to get the forms right. Just watch it closely, how in it's mammoth form puts all its delicate energy into drawing the lines. Just look at how it has one of its legs suspended in sheer concentration. For a moment, it looked all normal to me, until i saw the Mohawk walk into the scene with a Kane....Now I look at it in horror... is he overseeing his slave at work??

Looking at this, I can't help thinking, why would an elephant pick up a paint brush and start painting, just like that. If it did that was just perfect for all of us to be dumb-founded. Would it do that in its natural habitat when it needs to relax? Of course not! This is no relaxation for an animal!? Though it is said that an elephant thinks like a human being in certain ways. All I know from my experience hailing from a part in India where there exists a natural habitat of Elephants, is that they love to eat plantains in loads and grace on grass and would do anything to have that. At the same time they also obey when they see the stick. There has been millions of instances when they have attacked if they cross the border line into insanity where the Mohawk has been hurled by the elephant to his death. Alas! what do they do? They take the elephant away and shoot it down. Failing to look at who is performing these acts of insanity in the first place. Like any domestic animal it can be domesticated and they respond best to kindness but this is no response to kindness!! Is it? What do you think? I suddenly felt a sense of sadness not because of a fear that my profession of art could get wiped out, but the thought of depriving the freedom of another earthling for the sheer entertainment and commercial gain for human beings.

Though I must commend the skill of the trainer, I am pretty sure these Elephant Artists have got through an extreme amount of trauma doing an abnormal thing like this. I can think of many comparisons to human artists getting compelled to take to art and stardom against their will. At the end of the day they are humans trained by humans. But animals are more close to an innocent being. They get obedient against their will if they fear their extinction. This is what I see in this video

But elephants are such beautiful beings and humans could derive such pleasure by doing so many other things by their majestic presence on earth. Provide a safe habitat for example. This is what I did as an artist with my elephant heroes. I did sketches of them on my child-like visits to the zoo quite often like this sketch here:

And this is one of my comic experiences on one of my zoo trips again with a friend.

This is my take as an artist who loves and dotes on animals and pets. What is yours!!?

This week I lost one of my family pets "Gypsy - our golden retriever" who had a helpless demise after 10 days on saline. What I feel for Suda - the elephant (which animal writes in English!) is most profound when I grieve for gypsy.

I will have Gypsy's portrait posted here one of these days. And some of her funny videos. See you soon! and thanks for sharing my thoughts.