Arte Laine
Elaine L Hughes - Fine Art

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(posted on 7 Nov 2017)

So, I decided to take an armchair travel art workshop. I love Dreama Tolle Perry's art and she had an online oil painting workshop based in one of my favourite places in the world - Provence! So I signed up and have been happily mucking about painting romantic images of various Provencal delights. Dreama's Website

 

 

So the one big issue is that I haven't painted in oils for decades, and have been trying to learn acrylics, so after inquiry I decided to try the course out using Golden Open Acrylics

These are described by Golden as " a slow-drying paint with a slightly softer consistency than our Heavy Body paints. The increased working time of these colors expands their range to include more traditional techniques once only possible with oils." In short, they stay wet a long time, especially if applied thickly. So it is possible to work alla prima with them, and do more blending than is usual with acrylics.

It's also possible to make horrible messes with them, haha. Many of them are very transparent and there is a dearth of opaque colours. You need to apply them thinly if you want them to dry within a day or two. They get tacky on the palette but can be thinned with one of the mediums that Golden makes for the Open line.

I am still reserving judgement on them. I don't know if my struggles with them are due to lack of familiarity with them, or if they are truly as awful as they seem. Some of the colours are horrible (eg. there's an ugly sap green that seems good for nothing except making mud). So my initial impression is that if you want to paint with paints that dry slowly, go buy oils. My future in acrylics will most likely involve going back to the traditional heavy body paints.

What to do with my leftover Open acrylics? I think once this course is over I will use them up doing monotype prints.