If you’re anything like me, then you love how you can noodle with your oil painting hours, sometimes days, later, and you’ll also hate how acrylics dry so unbelievably fast. Well, Atelier may well be on to something here with their ‘Interactive‘ acrylic range.
Atelier Interactive is a relatively new acrylic paint from Atelier, the main difference between plain Atelier and this new Interactive paint is that Atelier claim that you can keep the paint active by misting it with plain water.
I bought a set of these paints several weeks ago and gave them a quick try, and I have to say: I am impressed with them. The only problem is that, even when I’m using oils, I tend to use very little paint… so little in fact that my oil paintings are usually dry within just several days, but having forced myself to blob Atelier around, it really does stay active as long as you keep an eye, well… a finger, on how it is drying.
The idea is this: you gesso your painting surface and, once it’s dry, begin painting. The trick, is to gently dab your paint with your finger and if it is becoming tacky, it’s time to mist. Not very scientific, but it works. Even after I’d left my test painting for an hour, I could still slightly reactivate the paint.
The only problem with this unscientific method is how much to mist, how often to mist, and from what distance to mist. That takes time and perseverance, but if you’re willing to tinker with them for a little while the Atelier Interactive’s are definitely a step in the right direction for acrylics, and I’ll definitely be using them again in the future.
DandyID
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