New Favorite Matte Acrylic Paints & Some Great New Art Books

I have used acrylic matte craft paints for a lot of years - generally Plaid, Americana or whatever other brands that places like Michael's sells. I really like the flat, almost chalky, matte-ness of the paints & they look really good in certain situations. I recently sold a couple of things in order to fund an order from Dick Blick and, while I spent hours going over my 'wish list' again & again , I had a look at Blick's matte acrylics -of course I had to try a bunch. There were very reasonably priced and the colors looked divine! I am happy to report that these colors are, in fact, divine and they do perform very nicely on a variety of media; cold press watercolor paper, various journal papers, pastel paper. Nice, creamy, saturated colors that give me better coverage than a lesser priced brand and retain that matte-ness that I like so much! Give them a try - I think you too will be most pleasantly surprised at the rich colors that you can have on hand for very little money! No. They won't take the place of my beloved Golden acrylics - but they all certainly have their uses - and these paints from Blick deserve a place in your paint box!

I also had a bit of a spree - also funded by the sale of some other items, at Amazon. I got the three books shown here - all of which are well worth the price. Mixed Emulsions is geared more to the mixed media painter I think (ATC's, Art2Mail, journal pages etc). One of the things that I find particularly interesting in this book is a 'time line' that runs along the bottom of the pages and describes the history of the item or technique being described.

"Acrylic Revolution" and "Rethinking Acrylics" are filled with information that I wanted to learn more about. The chemistry of acrylic paints, the differences between all of the mediums, gels and grounds and the different types of paint - transparent, opaque - and which colors give you which effects. Having never had an art class, this sort of information is really important to me - as I like to understand why things do what they do! There are also a lot of very interesting techniques ,that are suited best to acrylic applications (rather that oil paints), explained in much needed detail. I am happy to have found these two books. Initially I had thought that there might be some over-lapping of information and, to a very minimal degree, there may be a bit of that. All in all though these two books provide different ideas and information about my favorite kind of paints. I love the smell of oil paints - but I prefer the faster clean up and greater flexibility that acrylic paints and mediums offer.

I already have another order in my cart at Blick's so I guess I need to figure out something more to sell! Thanks, as always, for checking in. Seeing your comments and seeing folks 'follow' my blog with Google really makes me smile! A lot!

Have a very happy, creative weekend!