Golden Paint education

A few days ago the Western Ohio Watercolor Society in Springfield, Ohio, hosted Merle Rosen, one of their certified teachers in the use of Golden acrylic paints. Her demo was fantastic. She worked for 90 minutes, slathering acrylic products onto demo boards and passing them around for all to see. The single most enlightening demo was that of the new Open Acrylics by Golden. She painted two thick bands of paint side by side on a board and set them aside. Every 15 minutes she swiped her finger across each band. In about 30 minutes, the regular acrylic stroke was dry. The Open stroke was still wet when the meeting ended nearly 90 minutes later. Merle's talk was filled with information, from the structure of acrylic paint film to acrylic techniques and special mediums. Their product line is awesome. I use acrylics mostly for collage, but the demo has me thinking about adding in more paint and special effects. (BTW, I don't work for Golden!) After reading the three books on acrylics that I recently reviewed, I'm impressed with the possibilities of all acrylics. These products were just getting on their feet when I began painting watercolors in 1970 and I didn't like the plasticky feeling of the paint, which didn't dissolve on the palette like watercolor. I find it much more pleasant to work with now--creamier, I guess--and the colors are incredible. I recently read a review of Ampersand Aquabord (textured Claybord)that is said to be a good support for acrylics. Looks like I'll have to do some experimenting.

Freezing acrylics

It has been so cold in Ohio this month, at one time descending below 0 degrees Farenheit. This morning it was 15 above. We've had a few warmer days, barely up to freezing, but will probably have even more cold ones over the next few weeks. I've had email questions in the past about freezing acrylics to keep them workable and have advised against the practice. Recently, I came across an email I received a while ago from Mike Townsend of Golden Paints: "Acrylic paints can freeze and in turn may not return to usable product. We do design the paints to withstand 5 freeze/thaw cycles (literally frozen solid and then allowed to return to room temperatures) or more as part of our quality control, but this is more so to prevent paint from going bad during shipment or storage. It's generally not a good idea to continually freeze the paints if one can avoid it."

So it isn't a good idea to leave your acrylic paints and mediums in your car during sub-freezing temperatures. This would include cars parked in unheated garages that might drop in temperature over a period of time.