Acrylic Four Ways
An artist takes a spin with Liquitex Professional Acrylic INK!, Professional Paint
Markers, Professional Heavy Body Acrylic Paint and Professional Spray Paint.
Liquitex sent me Professional
Acrylic INK!, Professional Paint
Markers, Professional Heavy Body
Acrylic Paint, and if that weren’t
enough—the Liquitex Professional
Spray Paint. I have used, in the past,
the Liquitex Professional Heavy Body
Acrylic Paint for special purposes
(sometimes as an addition to my
normal split-primary palette), so I’m
familiar with light blue permanent,
medium magenta and light blue vio-
let. I’ve found the consistency (heavy
butter), the pigment load (high), and
the handling characterisitics to be
fi rst class. A stroke made with the
Professional Heavy Body Acrylic
Paint retains its integrity as it dries,
but it’s not so heavy that it comes off
the brush in clumps.
MAKING A MARK WITH INK
AND MARKERS
Th e ink Liquitex sent me was intense
and transparent. Ink, even pigmented
ink, is not a medium I use. Without
knowing the retail cost, it would
seem to me that a fl uid acrylic would
be a more economical choice in terms
of the actual amount of product you’d
use. If you, however, were creat-
ing small works, then I think the
Liquitex Professional Acrylic INK!
would serve very well. For my test I
used the pigmented ink on top of the
dark red on a current painting (see
page 30). As you can see, the green
pigmented ink retained its intensity
very well.
I had a super time using the
Professional Paint Markers. After
loading the nibs, I used both the
wide and small ones to apply lines to
my work in what was for me a more
direct way of drawing than using
ALTHOUGH I WORKED FOR MANY YEARS in transpar-
ent watercolor, about half the work I now do involves
acrylic paint in some form. I love the versatility of the
application (from a thin wash to heavy impasto), and I
use some of the many additives that are available that
change the paint’s consistency and handling character-
isitics. After all, as artists, we use what we like and like
what works. I compared the acrylics that the Liquitex
company sent me with the Holbein, Golden and
M.Graham acrylics that I usually use.
Road Test
By Mark Mehaffey
ABOVE: Summer
Beginning (acrylic
on panel, 12x9)
started with the
spray-painted
underpainting on
page 32.28 artistsmagazine.com
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