The question copied below is one that I get asked a lot, because most of my work is done in acrylic paint and the medium is notoriously difficult to paint with if you are trying to attain realistic effects. The short answer is that there is no single simple solution, and each artist must experiment and find his or her own way of forcing the stuff to work in a way way that suits the vision of the art.

Unfortunately, I can’t say I have a set way of working. Unlike the Hildebrandts [for example] who apparently developed early on a reliable and consistent method for handling the paint, I never know in advance how a painting is going to get made before I get started. I adapt my working procedure and process to fit the subject, the surface I am working on, and my mood at the time I am working. I’m not trying to duck the question; the point is I rarely know precisely how I’m going to go about completing a work until I get into it and start messing things up. 

The writer Anne Lamott, in her how-to book for beginning writers, suggests that the core of her creative process is essentially a two-step process: creating a “shitty first draft” and then editing and correcting it until it seems finished. Needless to say, the closer and more accurate the first step, the less involved the latter step will be. 

Painting can be much the same procedure. One starts with an approximation and speedy lay-in of the important elements, then proceeds to refine the parts and the whole at the same time until all the errors are corrected and things appear to be finished, at least to the eye of the artist. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? ;-)  

Much of that process depends on drawing skills and how clear the finished image is in your mind before you even begin. If the initial drawing-in of the essential shapes is accurate, it will save a huge amount of work later in the game, whereas second-guessing and correcting errors can turn the painting into a long trial of patience and frustration. Believe me, I speak from experience!  Even when I THINK I have a rock-solid mental picture of where I’m going with a painting I can find that major course-corrections are necessary and it can add a huge amount of effort to make the changes, alas. Acknowledging this, I usually find it well worth the time to draw out things in advance and do at least one color concept sketch of my idea before beginning the final painting. I’ll often do a full scale contour drawing of the major elements in the composition on tracing paper, which I will lay over the painting as I am working on it to check that I’m not going astray as I get into it.

But back to the medium itself:

I think much of the “problem” with acrylics is that they are so damned versatile: one can use them like watercolors and paint in thin delicate washes, or apply them with with a trowel, spreading  thick gloppy paint like mortar or stucco. They are available as intense watery dyes [formulated for airbrush artists but usable in any number of other ways] as well as in stiff pastes – and in every textural gradation in between. So how does one choose?  Well, only the artist can say. Which modality of acrylic paint appeals to your instincts and creative nature? Do you like thick defined brushstrokes or invisible gradations of tone? and etc.

This is an important question, because the handling of the paint is for the most part determined by the form in which you are using it. The techniques called for when painting with tube colors, for example, are entirely different from the way one handles airbrush colors or matte gouache-style acrylics. Different brushes, different surfaces, different ways of layering paint etc. To go into all the different ways it is handled would require a book, and I can’t cover all those bases here, even if i had the time to.

But I can say this: for the most part, my preference is for fluid jar-type acrylics; I rarely use the tube paints, which i find too cumbersome for anything except highlights and textural passages [painting rocks and concrete, etc.]. [[Side note: acrylics are very tough on brushes of any type -synthetic or natural. Starting from tube colors I found I was ruining the brushes just trying to thin the globs of paint down to get them to flow enough to be usable, so I eliminated that step by starting with fluid paints to begin with.]  I generally try to have a close idea of where I am going in a painting before starting, which usually requires a small comprehensive sketch in paint which i use as a guide for the full scale rendering. I work from background to foreground, painting in the environment, as it were, and then painting the objects and figures into that environment as I get further into the painting. That way the things IN the environment take on some of the colors of the environment, helping them to look a little more real as a result.

When I began to use a acrylics I quickly saw that the speedy drying time was the main problem with those paints: the paints dried even as I mixed them. My solution was to buy small mixing trays and pre-mix the gradations I thought I would need in advance, and work from those mixes while painting. Originally I used muffin tins and mini-ice cube trays for my mixing wells, until I discovered the 30-well plastic mixing trays made by the “Dr. Ph. Martin’s” dyes company, which suit my needs well. I store the trays with the mixed paints in flat Tupperware containers. They will stay wet and usable for weeks that way, though they can spoil and get funky in the summer if left too long. Right now I have about seven different Tupperware-style flat containers containing different palette mixtures for all the paintings I have going on. There is always one such container which is dedicated to color gradations in grays: a warm, neutral, and a cool set of values going from black to white in 6 to 9 steps. I use that one almost daily, especially for my value studies.

When a painting is done I’ll use the leftover paint to do a sketch or I’ll simply dispose of the paint, wash the container and re-use it on another project.

Well, that’s a short overview of my setup, which i hope will help you some in your experimentation. Best of luck!

Michael