How To Paint With Acrylic Paint On Canvas

Should I paint over my acrylic painting that hasn't worked?

"Take encouragement from the thought that y'all may learn from honest failure than from balmy success"
Solomon J Solomon – British Pre-Raphaelite painter

It'southward the contend with yourself that never ends…

Should I paint over my painting that's not going to plan or start again on a fresh canvas?

How do you lot weigh up the fourth dimension yous've invested, the toll of materials and all the emotions versus starting again…. it's nearly too much…

When do you lot need to first your acrylic painting again?

Imagine the scene, you lot've been tinkering over a all the same life painting for days, tweaking a chip here, a flake in that location and something is but is not right. Your previous colour has all stale up and you simply can't match information technology once more. The apple tree looks wrong, the cartoon is a bit 'out' and the colours, well what were y'all thinking the day before?

Oh sod information technology, I'm going to start once more.

You've spent out coin on the canvas and want to modify the moving picture then yous reach for the white paint intending to paint out the whole affair. Right pick or incorrect pick?

How to cover your Acrylic painting

You take to be aware of a few things if yous decide to repaint, and to brand the decision, is it worth it?

i. The paint surface won't feel the same – Once you lot've lost the 'molar' of the canvas the paint behaves differently, it doesn't pull off the brush in the same way.

2. You can't employ watercolour techniques. Because in one case the paint surface has congenital up watery pigment simply won't behave the same. Some of the most interesting areas in paintings are from the mix of thin transparent paint with thick impasto. This tin can be primal in portraits when trying to create the illusion of depth.

3. The pigment tin feel chalky. If y'all paint over the whole canvas with White acrylic, it volition feel chalky when you lot paint over it.

iv. You lose the glow of the ground. When you pigment Yellowish Ochre onto a white canvas (See: How a prepared canvas can drastically meliorate your painting) the play tricks is to paint it thick enough to class an opaque layer but sparse plenty to permit the white from the canvass to shine through and requite the colour a glow. When you paint over an existing painting you lose this glow.
I know what you lot're thinking, 'I'll simply paint the coloured ground again'. The problem is you'll have lost the absorbency of the canvas and gained some other layer of unwanted texture.

v. Your paints get slippy. Because Acrylics are plastic-based (See: What are your paints made from?) when they are built upward in layers they create a hard, shiny surface. This is rubbish to pigment on. Menstruum.

six. It tin can take longer than you think. To cover the painting completely will take a minimum of 2 coats, fifty-fifty with artist quality paint. To paint sections volition take longer because yous won't have the coloured ground to fall back on. You will have to cover every area of the canvas.

We've all been in that location

I of my moments of 'the black' came ii days before a deadline for a client. It was for a large triptych painting of a sky. Each canvas was 6ft x 4ft, and I'd spent over iii weeks on the paintings, they were practically finished.

They looked good, all they needed was a few subtle glazes to bring the paintings together.
Vanessa had simply popped upstairs to make a cup of tea with the fateful words 'They are finished Will, but varnish them' The phone rang, she was delayed upstairs.
15 minutes afterwards she came down, all the canvases were at present white. No dramatic clouds, no subtle glazing, just one big problem.

I don't retrieve I tin can echo what she said.

The moral of the story

The triptych got repainted, it looked improve than the first. Just, it still took me another two weeks and a lot of trickery and tardily nights. Sometimes if a painting is not quite sitting right, reserve judgment, have a brew. Come dorsum to it with calm composure.

Notwithstanding, I don't e'er get abroad with a repainting.
Even with all my feel the pile of unfinished, slightly embarrassing paintings, is a articulate reminder that sometimes when you lot know in your heart a painting is not right it is worth starting over again.

Information technology can be depressing. Fifty-fifty though yous'll think it is smashing to save the coin on a canvas information technology's a false economic system. The time it takes to paint over, add extra layers, and try to keep a department you were pleased with, information technology is just not worth it. Don't paint over it, keep it equally a record of your progress.
Take the hit in your wallet and put it downward to experience, meet it every bit an artistic progression tax.

This, of form, is easy to say. The side by side time I feel like throwing a canvas across the room I shall endeavor to practice what I preach, just the urge just to tweak a bit, just to repaint that 1 lilliputian passage can exist hard to resist.

The respond:

If you lot're a beginner it will not merely take more than time, cost more money, and will probably look worse.

Of course, in that location are certain situations if you're more experienced and can judge the level of repainting needed i.e: not usually the entire canvas, when repainting is a lifesaver but should be reserved for very pocket-sized areas.

Acrylics are fantastic, y'all tin can pigment over your mistakes easily and completely but having this level of flexibility tin can lead to you abusing information technology by never getting past the kickoff canvas. This tin can stilt your progress by becoming too precious and wanting everything to exist perfect.

Mistakes are office of progress.

"I fabricated 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum earlier I got it right. At that place were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That'south how I came up with a solution."
Sir James Dyson