Heavy Body Acrylic is our nearest paint in terms of viscosity and behaviour, but has many other characteristics that are different to oil paint. Try it out and see how you go.

When it comes to starting your painting it’s important to set up in an area with enough open space and good lighting. The scale you work on will mostly be down to personal preference. If you’re a beginner a large, empty canvas can be daunting, so starting on a small scale may be better. Conversely working on a large scale can feel freeing if you have the space available. We’d all love a big studio space with high vaulted ceilings but many of us can only work as large as our spare rooms will allow! Choosing Your Painting Surface Soft Body colours and inks can be used with springy natural hairs and softer synthetics. Synthetic fibres are remarkably resilient and can withstand more wear and tear than a natural brush. Brush Shapes There aren’t many hard and fast rules when it comes to acrylic painting. Sometimes the best approach is to experiment and see where your work takes you. Other artists prefer to do some preliminary sketches or paintings to help keep their focus. Once you’re settled on your composition, your sketches can be scaled up onto canvas. This can be done using a grid transfer method, with scaling dividers, pantographs, tracing paper, tracedown or even a projector. Use Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic Paint with Liquitex String Gel for some interesting effects Student grade acrylics are designed for beginners and students who are just starting out with acrylic painting. They are generally less expensive than artist grade acrylics and are often made with lower quality pigments and binders. As a result, they may not have the same level of color intensity, lightfastness, or permanence as artist grade acrylics. They also dry faster and may not handle as well as artist grade acrylics. Short handled brushes are suitable for fine detail or small scale work. Their short handle means you can work much closer to your canvas, making adding those fine finishing touches easy. They are the preferred choice for artists who favour a precise, detailed technique. Synthetic and Natural Hair BrushesAcrylic paints come in what I consider to be three basic types for fine art painting. These are what you will most likely be faced with for artist grade paints. When you are squeezing paint onto your palette it’s important to consider the scale of your work and how much colour you will need. Even though stay wet palettes will keep your mixes fresh, it’s best to only squeeze out as much colour as you need to prevent wastage. Preparing Your Area If you’re unsure whether acrylic is the right medium for you, we suggest you invest in some student-grade paints. These cheaper colours won’t be as bright and lightfast as with higher-end options, but you’ll get a feel for the application, consistency and texture of acrylic paint. If you’re a committed artist with a mind to selling or exhibiting work, you probably already know it’s worth spending what you can: you’ll see the results in the vibrancy of the colours, and they’ll better stand up to the test of time. Liquitex Professional Acrylic Artist Colour Heavy Body comes from the world's bestselling brand in acrylic colours.

Highly versatile, dries to a low gloss surface on high impasto areas and a soft satin finish on thinner applications. The chemical properties of acrylic are much of a muchness from brand to brand. Where they differ is in their consistency and the levels of pigment they contain. We’ll go into pigment in the following section. If you're looking to buy artists' quality paints, you'll notice that some colors are much more expensive than others (although still cheaper than oil paints). This is because some pigments are very hard to obtain. Some manufacturers will group their paints according to " series" with " 1" being the cheapest and " 7" the most expensive. Typically the earth colors are the cheapest, while the colors derived from cadmium can cost up to four times as much! Some brands offer cheaper options by substituting with synthetic pigments, but they will likely have a lower permanence rating and less color intensity. You can spot this on the product by looking for the word "hue" after the pigment name. With that said, I use some of the "hue" colors in my art and I'm quite satisfied with the quality.DPP stands for the pigment DiketoPyrroloPyrrole. It is a hybrid pigment - an innovation in pigment manufacturing where blends produce pigment with a balance of properties (i.e blend of organic and inorganic pigment). Organic and inorganic pigments differ in performance. Organic pigments have strengths in chroma and tint strength but are weaker in lightfastness and opacity; it is the other way round with inorganic pigments. Hybrid pigments provide an alternative, that help to bridge the gap between performance without neglecting environmental consideration. Another important quality to look out for is colour shift – that is how much the paint changes colour as it dries. Minimising this removes the need to compensate for changes in colour and the best acrylic paints dry much like the colour you get initially. As with any acrylic from the Liquitex lab, Heavy Body is at the forefront of acrylic innovation. The formula represents the latest in acrylic resin technology. Its low-odor acrylic resin base gives an increased open time and colors of great clarity and vibrancy, with minimal wet-to-dry shift. The paint film is highly flexible, durable, non-yellowing, UV-resistant and water-resistant when dry.