Painting Tools

As you all know, I have been focused on watercolor and acrylic work these last several months. I haven’t forsaken rubber stamps, just focused on improving my skills with these media.

One thing I have been playing with is using different tools to apply acrylic paint. Watercolor is fairly straight forward. Acrylic heavy body paints are stiff, almost like oil paints. That provides you a variety of ways to apply the paint.

Acrylic paint watered down is rather like watercolor. The benefit to acrylic paint is that you can layer a fresh layer on top of a dry layer and not pick up the bottom layer. Watercolor will lift off with the fresh addition of water, even if dry. However, if you do not let the first layer of acrylic paint dry and try to add more on top, you will lift everything off the base.

Other tools to use for acrylic paint: pallet knives, makeup sponges (one of my favorite crafting tools!), paint brushes, texture tools that you would use on gel plates. Recently I have been playing with the makeup sponges and liking the soft look that is achieved with them and paint. Just like using the sponges with an ink pad as the color source and smushing or dusting the color on the paper.