Acrylic Mediums: Are They Essential or Not?

When it comes to painting with oil paints, painting mediums are something you need in addition to the paints themselves. It’s up to you whether you use only turpentine (which you’ll definitely need to wash your brushes), only linseed oil, a combination of the two, or a ready-made medium with specific properties, such as faster or slower drying or a glossier finish. But you’ll need one of these if you want to thin the paint.

On the other hand, you can simply use tap water to thin acrylic paints. You don’t need extra bottles of different solvents and thinners on your table while painting. A container of water is enough. Use water to wash paint off your brush or thin the paint to make it more fluid and transparent. This gives acrylic paints an advantage over oil paints, especially for beginners. So if you’re wondering what you need for your first acrylic painting, it’s simple: a canvas, brushes, paints, and water.

When Is It Time for Acrylic Mediums?

As we mentioned, acrylic mediums aren’t essential, but... Paints are all you need for your first few paintings, but as you get to know them and explore working with them in more depth, your expectations will grow too. You’ll want to achieve effects in your painting that you’ve seen in the work of other artists or the old masters, but you can’t quite manage it. That’s the right time to start considering acrylic mediums, because they let you change the properties of acrylic paints.

Water is not always suitable for thinning acrylic paints, because a larger amount of water can affect the properties of the binder in acrylic paint, causing the paint to lose its gloss and binding strength. Sometimes you want a transparent paint with gloss, transparent but thick layers of paint, or an exceptionally thick and “solid” paint that you can use to create raised surfaces. You can’t achieve these results with paint and water alone.

How to Choose the Right Acrylic Medium

The range of acrylic mediums is so broad today that even experienced painters can find it overwhelming. When buying and using them, it’s important to know the difference between pastes, gels, acrylic paint thinners, and drying retarders, because they are completely different products and are used in different ways. Some can cause unwanted cracking or peeling if used incorrectly. Here’s a brief overview of each category:

Acrylic Pastes

Thick white mixtures that you can apply to canvas to create raised surfaces, then let dry and paint over. Or you can mix them with acrylic paints to make the paint thicker. These products are white both when wet and after drying (unless they are special-effect pastes). This is important because adding them to your paint will change its shade and make it lighter.

Thinners

Thinners are products you use to make paint more fluid without losing its gloss, as it can when thinned with plain water. One such product is Pouring medium, which most of you are familiar with because it’s currently popular for fluid painting. Glazing mediums are similar, and you can use them to create delicate, transparent, glaze-like layers.

Drying Retarders

Drying retarders are fluid and come in small bottles that clearly state you should be careful about how much you add to the paint. They slow the drying of acrylic paint, giving you more time to paint and achieve results similar to oil paints, such as the “wet-on-wet” technique. You really should use them with care, because they can cause unwanted reactions if you add more than the recommended amount.

Gel Mediums

Gel mediums are products worth investing in first because you can use them in several ways. When fresh, they look exactly as you’d expect, like a milky white gel. Once dry, they become glass-clear and water-resistant. There are many varieties, but the basic categories are gloss and matte gels, which may be heavy or extra heavy, referring to their thickness and firmness.

Besides their basic use, adding them to paint to make it thicker, glossier, and more transparent while keeping brushstrokes clearly visible, you can also use gel to thin paint. Add a little gel medium along with the water so the paint keeps its gloss and binding strength. Gel mediums can also be used as glue when you want to attach a piece of canvas or paper to canvas or paper for collage. You can also use gel on its own to create a raised surface on canvas or paper. Tap a palette knife into fresh gel for a textured surface, or use a comb to create a grid, then paint over it. You can also apply a thin layer of gloss or matte gel over a painting to unify gloss and matte areas.

The full range of acrylic accessories becomes apparent when you start combining them. Since they all have the same base, they work well together and you can mix them as you like, except for drying accelerators and some special paint-thickening products, which have a limited amount you can use. This is always clearly marked on the packaging. In time, through experimentation, you’ll discover which combinations work best for you.

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