Acrylics are my favourite media for most subjects.
They are bold, vibrant. They are fluid. You can use them thickly and create a texture on the paper, or dilute them with water until they look like watercolours. They are so versatile…
These are some of my drawings:
This was a clay figurine I made many years ago. I guess I must have been in secondary school, perhaps? No idea when. I quite like it, it feels solid, vibrant, expressive despite not having much of a face.
And acrylics, as I said, are my favourite medium for general use.
For this painting I used a few plastic painting knives I bought cheaply. I know painting knives can give fantastic effects used with oil paints, but my oil paints were too old and too delicate to take chances. Besides, I didn’t fancy painting something that could take weeks to dry.
Anyhow, I found it extremely difficult to wait for paint to dry. I had to put these aside -to dry- and start painting something else. I felt frustrated that the daylight was changing as the paint was still too wet to paint over.
I also felt unable to guide the knives to the right spots. I kept getting paint in the wrong places. I felt clumsy applying paint with flimsy flat sticks.
But I’m glad I tried.
I decided not to give up on painting knives yet. I had another go with this figurine. This time I took two sessions. I was more relaxed that the first time because I knew what to expect. I also applied the paint more thinly, with more thought.
For some reason I didn’t get to use the acrylics much. Our tutors had advised us to use a variety of media for our sketches, and I decided to take up things that would challenge me. But I’m quite pleased with these nevertheless.
Thanks for reading this.
More drawings coming up soon.