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What are Acrylic Colours?

The paint in the red tube is Cryla Flow Colour. The paint in the green tube is Cryla Colour.

Acrylic colours first arrived on the market in this country in 1963. Daler-Rowney produce two ranges of acrylic colour which I use, Cryla Colour and Cryla Flow Colour.

Cryla Colour is very thick, has a buttery texture similar to oil colour and comes in a small tube. Because of its consistency it is used mainly for palette knife work. As with oils, an acrylic painting can be built up to achieve a tremendous amount of relief work (impasto). The immediate advantage of acrylics over oil colours used in this way is that oils take months to dry but acrylics take only hours, even when put on really thickly.

I prefer to use brushes with this medium. This is where the other type of acrylic colour, Cryla Flow Colour, comes in, as it is better to use with a brush. Unless stated, I have used Cryla Flow Colour for all the exercises in this book. This type of acrylic colour comes in a longer tube. You can add Gel Retarder to slow down the drying time and use Texture Paste for building up heavy impasto. There are also high-quality nylon brushes on the market, which I use all the time and find best for all my acrylic painting, apart from small detail work.

A Stay-Wet Palette keeps the paint wet on the palette almost indefinitely, saving a lot of paint from being wasted by the paint drying too soon. I strongly recommend the use of this.

A choice of techniques

One very unique and exciting property of working with acrylic colour is that you can paint in an ‘oil’ painting technique or in a ‘watercolour’ painting technique, or use both techniques in the same picture – see my two paintings (below). These two different ways of working are described later in the book.

The Snow Drift acrylic watercolour technique on Waterford watercolour paper 300 lb Rough 50 × 75 cm (20 × 30 in) I worked this painting without using any white paint – just as I would a watercolour. The dark sky helps to make the snow (unpainted white paper) look even whiter.

Yachts and Wind, Potter Heigham acrylic oil technique on primed hardboard 25 × 28 cm (10 × 12 in) Notice how much movement there is in this painting. The clouds, the yacht sails and the water all help to give the illusion of a busy, blustery, sunny day. I painted it with my normal oil technique.