Tuesday, December 30, 2008

acrylics = love/hate relationship...

I've always had a love/hate relationship with acrylics and I think the "hate" is growing steadily with each painting. I'm starting to get seriously frustrated by the rapid drying nature of acrylics. I'm thinking of trying out oil paints or maybe just buying some acrylic paint retardant. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm using really cheap student grade acrylics? Either way it's driving me nuts and I think I'll dive back into watercolours and gouache in the meantime... Possibly dry media...


water lilies
acrylics on canvas, 8x10
(commissioned piece)

This was referenced off a few water lily photos I looked up on Google, combined arbitrarily in my head... I'm still struggling a lot with composition - does anyone have any book or class recommendations for this?

Since this is likely my last post of the year, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year! :)

4 comments:

a_ndy said...

It still looks nice to me. Could it be that the acrylics love you, and you hate them? Or maybe it's the other way round...

Chanp said...

I think theres no reason to let the 'hate' grow with the acrylics, because there are a lot of successes u can take away with this painting.

I think this is a great piece in my honest opinion and I like a lot of things about it. I like the warmness of the waterlilies vs the coolness of the other areas and I like the painterly strokes of the water it makes it look like it has a reflective surface. Also the little reds in the waterlilies is a good touch

Hmmm yea u should try some oil paints sometime, they are fun the only thing is it gets muddy very easily if u mix a lot of colours lol. Keep it up!

Geoffrey L Cheung said...

it looks really cool! it looks very oil-painting-y. the not-too-much-contrast look is what's doing it from my monitor i think :P

Joyce said...

@ Andrew: Thanks! And erm... /confused? 8D;;;

@ Peter: Thanks, I really appreciate it! I definitely won't give up on acrylics forever, I think I'll just take a bit of a break, so no worries there! :)

Oh that's true... I'm always worried about the toxicity of oil paints though...

@ Geoff: Thanks! What's this about your monitor contrast?!? xD;;;