Liquitex Professional Glazing Fluid Medium, 237 ml (Pack of 1),transparent

Product Information

I’ve chosen this blue because it also has a lovely transparent quality to it, which will make it handy in the later stages of the painting for the clear final blue glazes. We mentioned earlier that some people use water to try to create glazes. Using water to thin out acrylic paint in this way does make it more transparent but will also cause problems with adhesion. You should instead use an acrylic glazing medium because it can increase your paint’s transparency without lessening its adhesive qualities. You can add as much acrylic glazing medium to your paint as you like, without it causing any adhesion problems because it consists mainly of an acrylic binder. This means that you can create very subtle glazes that have high transparency with very little effort. Just add a tiny amount of paint to a large amount of glazing medium and coat it over your painting. If you’re looking for the best glazing medium for oil painting, give linseed oil a try! You might just find that it’s the perfect medium for you. For a comprehensive guide to varnishing take a look at our blog all about varnishing here: Varnishing Acrylic Paintings

A selection of acrylic Gloss Mediums, adding some is great way to increase the intensity of acrylic colours. Some mediums include substances that further accelerate drying, useful if you like to paint impasto and can’t rely upon the oxidisation of thin paint layers. Common additives of this type include metal salts, particularly manganese or lead. These are usually toxic and degrade paint films, so avoid unless you’re in a hurry. Texturising or body agents The dried texture was interesting in how it reflected light, and the glaze effect, when it was painted over with a transparent colour, was very notable and pleasing.I’ve tested a few popular glazing mediums to see how they perform: Linseed oil, Walnut oil, Poppyseed oil, Stand oil, Galkyd, and Damar varnish (mixed with a paint thinner). Golden Clear Granular Gel, when wet, looks like rice pudding and feels very rough and gritty, as it’s full of little plastic shards. This makes it hard to handle, control and scratch into. Its opacity when wet, makes it hard to judge value, as it dries almost completely clear. Expect a massive colour shift if you’re combining it with acrylic colour. However, once I’d painted in my muted green/blue mix onto the dark areas, it looked too green, so I introduce a red to balance this out.

Glazing is a way to lighten a color while still maintaining the saturation. The brilliant colors that you can achieve with glazing are often described as “jewel like.” They have a vibrancy to them that you can’t achieve by adding white. Above are two swatches of Dioxazine Purple. The swatch at the bottom is mixed with Titanium White while the one at the top is mixed with glazing medium. Commonly called ‘Nylon’, Golden Synthetic has some unique characteristics in that its retention, snap and spring are all superb. They are 100% Vegan Friendly. Artisan Thinner changes the colour, it is lighter temporarily. It mixes in easily, is not thin like a solvent. Acrylic paint is an incredibly adaptable medium and benefits greatly from a broad selection of pastes and gels that can be used to increase viscosity, create shimmering effects and so on. Here are selection of some of those mediums: By the end of this article, you should have a good grasp of the most common mediums and additives you might find useful additions to your toolbox, and how they might benefit your future painting endeavours. Matt & Gloss MediumAs you gain confidence with these mediums, you can adapt them to suit your needs. You can make them more fluid by adding extra turpentine, though be careful not to add too much as it will reduce gloss and adhesion. They can also be matted down by dissolving a little wax varnish in them. This can be bought off the shelf or made at home by putting some wax pellets in a sealed jar with solvent (half and half, by volume). Holbein flowed least of the five with both paints, but it wasn’t bad. It was just surprising since it is the most fluid. Maybe it is more like a thinner than an extender. The hardest and least flexible of all Golden products, it increases film hardness and needs to be used in pure form on rigid surfaces. It also needs to dry at a minimum of 21 degrees. It improves adhesion to non-porous surfaces. Dries to a high gloss with an excellent transparency. Useful for hard edge techniques as it has less pull than other acrylic compositions. GAC 400

Unfortunately, there’s no ratio that I can give you for how much glazing medium you need to add to a color to achieve a specific transparency. That’s because the tinting strength of each color varies.Flow improver works by breaking the surface tension of the water inside the paint which thins the paint without reducing colour strength or compromising the finish. Flow improver is sometimes referred to as flow aid, depending on the brand.

Flow Improvers must be diluted with water, when used this way the thin acrylic colour and increase flow without separating the binder from the pigment.Some pigments are more transparent than others. If you want to create glazes that are as transparent as possible, then you should select colors that are transparent. The color charts from the manufacturers will help you to identify which colors are transparent. Some brands even list this information on the tube.