Leisure Painter — June 2017

well-saturated colours. These colours

are priced in Series, using a numeric or

alphabetical coding – for instance 1 to 5

or A to E, A or 1 being the cheapest.

This code will be marked on the tube.

Student quality colours are usually made

to a single price, with pigment costs

reduced by adding filler and by replacing

expensive colours, such as the cadmiums

and cobalts, with ‘hue’ colours, blended

from cheaper pigments to look like the

named colours. These are usually labelled

as hue, such as cobalt blue hue. They may

also be bound in cheaper resins, which are

milky when in the wet paint, giving a

softer and paler colour than the paint will

reveal when dry. In many cases you will

find that Student colour lacks the opacity

found in the Artists’ ranges. It can be rather

streaky, make flat colours and obliteration

hard to achieve. However, in some subject

matter this streaky translucency can be

used most effectively.

Artists’ quality

Daler-Rowney Cryla Heavy BodyThis was

the first British-made acrylic colour, first

marketed in 1963. The paint is buttery,

retaining brushstrokes well. Cryla is

available in a range of 87 colours and the

price of Series A 75ml tube is £7.75(rrp).

Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylicgives

a longer working time, the transparent

binder ensures that there will be no colour

shift in colours from wet to dry. The 60ml

tube in Series 1 is £7.75(rrp).

Atelier Interactive Acrylicallows the painter

to have complete control over the drying

speed of the colour. Atelier Interactive has

a smooth, buttery consistency, drying to a

velvety satin finish. The colour is available

in a range of 75 colours with a Series 1

80ml tube costing £5.80(rrp).

Golden Open Acrylicis a slow drying Artists’

acrylic with a slightly softer consistency.

Mixed colours do not dry out on the

palette. Covering the palette with Clingfilm

will retain a wet palette for days. There are

80 colours available in 60ml tubes at the

price of £8.50(rrp) in Series 1.

Liquitex Heavy Body AcrylicThere are 100

colours in this thick and richly buttery,

satin-finish colour. Liquitex is good for

impastowork, retaining brushstrokes well.

Its slower drying speed makes it ideal

where blended effects are required. The

59ml tubes cost £7.25(rrp) for Series 1.

Student quality

Daler-Rowney System 3 Acrylic Original

Popular among beginners and students, its

60 colours have good pigment loading and

will give slight impasto. For a heavier

texture there is the System 3 Heavy Body

range, available in 35 colours. Both ranges

come in 75ml and 150ml tubes and in

larger pots. The 75ml tubes cost £4.96(rrp).

Daler-Rowney Graduate AcrylicAffordable,

bright and strong, non-toxic acrylics made

for beginners or those who work large.

The colours come in 120ml tubes with

push-up caps, or pots of up to 1litre.

The 120ml tube cost £3.75(rrp).

Winsor & Newton Galeria AcrylicThe 60

colours are saturated and brilliant, with

http://www.painters-online.co.uk JUNE 2017 33

t

Acrylics

KNOW YOUR PAINTS

The first column of the colour chart below shows the power of the brand’s titanium

white and whether or not it obliterates well. The white was applied in tube consistency

in a thin but dense stroke.

The colour shift spots show how our eight colours fare when the wet and dry spots

are compared, the colours mixed sometimes becoming more saturated or darker in tone

when dry. To demonstrate this, in the first column I put a spot of the brand’s cadmium

red (in Student quality colours the red was a hue colour). I dried this quickly with a hair

dryer and checked its tone and saturation against the wet colour. I then replicated the

wet colour as per the second spot.

The second test was to check for colour shift in colours reduced to tints with white –

the colour shift is often more obvious when white is added. In all but one of the Artists’

colours there was no colour shift, whereas the Student colours all exhibited this trait.

Daler-

Rowney

Cryla

Golden

Open

Liquitex

Atelier

Interactive

Winsor &

Newton

Professional

Daler-

Rowney

System 3

Daler-

Rowney

Graduate

Winsor

& Newton

Galeria

Colour

when dry

Tint

when wet

Tint

when dry

Colour

when wet

LP06 32-35 Paul2_Layout 1 05/04/2017 13:27 Page 33