Calling all acrylic users:

Due to my asthma I’ve been painting with acrylics rather than oil. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I can’t paint 100% along with bob and have had to adapt some. The paintings I struggle with the most are unfortunately my favorites - the black canvases. Open acrylic paint and acrylic retarding medium have helped open the drying time but I have yet to find anything similar to liquid white that I can apply as a base layer. Anyone have products they could recommend or am I hunting for a unicorn that doesn’t exist?

    I wonder if glycerin would serve? Someone in another thread was talking about using glycerin as a retardant.

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      • Post #3

      I paint a lot with acrylics. I don’t think that there’s anything similar to liquid white, clear or black. Actually my biggest problem with them is the sky. Also the reflections are harder to do. It works better on canvas or canvas panel than on paper. For the other parts you don’t really need to have it liquid. Here you can really use the advantages of acrylics e.g. in creating different layers without having troubles in mudmixing or get the paint stick. I also paint Bob Ross paintings with oils, they are a bit easier to follow but you can also do a lot of them in acrylics. Maybe all, but in my opinion there are a few skies which I can’t do. But no need to follow 100%.

      Tom0779

      Thanks. Like you said reflections and skies are the most troublesome - especially on black canvas. On the other hand there are perks. I just can’t help but touch up paintings endlessly. As I understand you can’t really do that with oils without ending up with a pretty pile of mud.

      I just frustrated and hopeful that there was a magic product. I will just continue to figure out bobs paintings using my own techniques 😄

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          • Post #5

          Lilikins I think there exists a product which liquids the paint itself called pouring fluid, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HFVSMX9/?coliid=I3MXRZRC6VL59L&colid=30P62OVDN2IU8&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
          But I did not try it yet. I planned to buy some, maybe it helps for the "critical" parts of the painting.
          I have panted some on black paper (actually covered white paper with black gesso) and it did work ok, e.g. recently posted S15E12 which was done that way. I don´t try to exactly produce the effects as Bob does, I try to help me with some workarounds I found with time🙂

              5 months later
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