Golden Acrylic Colour have a vast range of acrylic paint mediums, such as effect pastes, gels, and additives. It might be difficult to choose which acrylic medium is best for the necessary working qualities, therefore we've put a guide showcasing the USPs of each. This wide range opens up amazing possibilities that will enable you to accomplish a great deal of varied ideas to enhance your practice.
Gels are transparent and increase body, those gels with aggregates have bits in them to change the texture and to produce unique textural effects.
Effects Gels generally use sand and gritty concrete-like solids in a transparent binder to increase the texture and vary the body of the paint, so their opacity is slightly increased.
Molding pastes increase body but are almost completely opaque and some have additives to give them unique textural effects.
Clear Tar Gel, Leveling Gel and Glazing Liquid affect paint’s viscosity, flow and drying time, but all are levelling, smooth and transparent.
Golden Additives such as retarder, open thinner and wetting agent affect how the paint dries, decreasing surface tension, maintaining or slowing drying times.
GAC Mediums are the most fluid of all the mediums and change the hardness, film flexibility and adhesion of acrylic paint.
Soft Gels are thinner than Heavy Body Colours and can be mixed with acrylic colours to produce brilliant glazes or more commonly, to build up texture and achieve impasto like effects. They are also often used as a base for wet blending or as an adhesive for collage.
There are five different consistencies of GOLDEN gels the thickest being Extra Heavy Gel, then Heavy Gel, Regular Gel and Soft Gel. With each gel then available in gloss, semi-gloss and matt finishes. We also stock some alternative effect gels such as Clear Levelling Gel which
Along with the above regular soft gels, Golden also have a vast range of Pumice or effects gels, which use various additives to create texture but vary the consistency in a variety of ways
Glass Bead Gel creates a strongshimmer on acrylic paint. Made with genuine glass beads, its unique visual effect – like that of condensation on cold glass / frosting - is best seen in thin films that allow the mono-layer of glass beads to be illuminated on a light coloured ground. Golden Glass Bead Gel is particularly effective with light colours.
Clear Granular Gel contains little pieces of plastic crystal solids in an acrylic polymer binder. It extends paint and adds a coarse texture with a beautiful transparent gem-like effect. Ppaque when wet but it does dry to a transparent finish.
Golden Pumice Gels are used to create gritty, absorbent, and textured surfaces. They dry hard with a greyish colour from the ground volcanic rock they contain. While generally opaque, these gels contain only clear acrylic gel and ground pumice. Fine Pumice gel is an excellent ground for charcoal, graphite and pastel, all Pumice Gels have an absorbent quality that works well under or blended with Golden Acrylic Colours. They are available in three different textures - Fine, Coarse and Extra-Coarse.
Clear Tar Gel is designed to yield a pully, tar-like feel, but in a colourless gel. This gel has an extremely resinous and stringy consistency, which makes it feel very different than other acrylics. Useful for generating fine detailed lines by "dripping" it over surfaces, as it continuously flows from palette knives or other tools. Blends with all Golden Acrylic colours to offer a full range of colours with which to work.
Clear Leveling Gel has a unique resinous and stringy consistency that dries to a flexible, high gloss film. Milky white when wet, the Gel becomes transparent when dry. For best results, it should neither be poured thickly nor be used as a replacement for epoxy or other casting resins. It can be used to increase the transparency and sheen of acrylic paints.
Effects Pastes are mediums that have additives in the acrylic polymer to alter and add texture to acrylic paint, we stock a number of different types that achieve different effects.
Molding pastes are opaque and used to provide textural effects to achieve impasto like consistency, and are useful for creating 3-D textures in a work. It has a slightly porous texture due to the inclusion of marble or chalk particles, and is fairly absorbent. Light Molding Paste is very lightweight making it useful for creating a lot of depth on large-scale pieces.
Molding Pastes come in the following ranges Molding Paste, Extra Heavy Molding Paste, Light Molding Paste and Coarse Molding Paste (which is semi-transparent and dries to a textured surface).
Fiber Paste is an opaque, viscous medium that dries to a surface similar to rough paper. It can be used as a drawing ground or as a base for acrylic washes as extremely absorbent.
Crackle Paste is a thick, opaque cracking material, designed to develop deep fissure-like cracks as it cures. The size and extent of the crackle pattern is dependent on many factors, including the thickness of the application, and the environmental conditions (temperature, relative humidity, and air flow) during drying. It has white, low-density solids that replace traditional fillers. Its unique ratio of specific solids and binders allows for a "controlled failure" to occur which creates the crack.
It has a consistency similar to cake icing, easily manipulated by a palette knife. Peaks will maintain their height and appearance.
Retarder is used to slow the evaporation rate of water in acrylic paint - essentially slowing the drying time. This additive simply increases the amount of time you're able to manipulate the paint before it starts drying.
For the artist, the most important aspect is how long the paint remains mobile because, as soon as enough water leaves the film, the paint can no longer be manipulated easily. This stage is referred to as “touch dry” or “skinned over.”.
For most painting techniques, this is the drying state that is more important than how long before the paint becomes solid.
Like Retarder, Glazing Liquid is a slow-drying medium, but it was originally designed for interior decorative finishes. Because it is made with 100% pure acrylic water-based polymer emulsions. It can be blended with house paints and artist acrylic paints to create an incredible variety of colour glazes.
Golden Open Acrylic Thinner is an additive designed to thin the consistency of Golden Open Acrylics, without altering the drying time, as well as maintain and adjust the workability of colours on the palette. Open Thinner can also be used as a thin-bodied slow drying solution when using other forms of acrylic colour, such as Heavy body, Fluid or Inks.
Similar to pretty much all of the above this range of additives don't add colour themselves, but instead act as modifiers to change the properties of your acrylics. You can use them to thin the paint, make it more transparent, create glazes, alter the gloss or matte finish, improve how the paint sticks to your surface, or even bind pigments for mixed media art. There are different GAC mediums available, each with specific strengths. For instance, GAC 100 is a versatile choice, GAC 200 makes your paint film harder, and GAC 400 can stiffen fabrics. It's important to remember that GAC additives are not meant as a final varnish for your artwork; Golden has separate varnishes specifically designed for that purpose.
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