I started painting when I was at school and I remember using oil paint the first time. I painted a picture on brown paper of two surfers riding a large wave. This painting took me a long time to paint and I was very proud of it once I had finished it. After school I went to art college and then studied fine art for three years. I stopped painting for a few years after university but started again in london for three years. I have painted the most since moving to Barcelona four years ago. I have painted 16 oil paintings and I am improving each time I paint.
Here is my knowledge of paint
There are 4 main types of paint used for painting in art. Oil paint, acrylic paint, watercolour paint and gouache.
Oil paint is a thick paint, that doesn’t move around easily and takes a long time to dry. To combat these annoying aspects of oil paint, I mix a chemical liquid with it called Liquin. This makes the oil paint thinner so that it moves a lot easier and it speeds up the drying time. It’s a very good chemical to have. It is brown and looks like jelly, it also has quite a strong smell so put the painting outside when you want it to dry so that the Liquin doesn’t make your room stink.
Acrylic is a plastic based paint and when it dries it has a shiny finish. I don’t like shiny finishes so I use oil paint. Oil paint also if it gets on your clothes, you can use washing up liquid to get the paint and colour out of your clothes. If you get acrylic paint on your clothes, you have to wash it off before it dries and hardens because it just turns to plastic and is very difficult to wash out of clothes.
Acrylic and Oil paint are usually used to paint on canvas which is a material stretched over a wooden frame. These are called canvases and you can choose the thickness or the smoothness of the canvas at the art shop depending on your preference.
Watercolour and gouache paints both react with water and are know for their ability to be taken outside easily to paint with. They are not messy, they are lightweight and the quality of the colours is good. The main difference between watercolour and gouache paint is that when watercolour is dry, it demonstrates many tones and the paint can be thick and colourful or thin and washy. When gouache paint dries, usually the colour is a similar tone all over and has a chalky effect.
With watercolour paint there are two options of how you can buy the paint. You can buy the paint in tubes and squeeze out the paint into a pallet when you need it. Or you can buy the paint in cubes or packets where the paint Is hard and you need water to activate it.
Then there is the rule that if you want watercolour paint to spread easily, add more water. But adding water will dilute the colour and make the colour weak. If you add less water, the paint won’t move as much but the colour will be stronger.
Watercolour and Gouache paints are usually painted on watercolour paper. Watercolour paper is usually thick so that it doesn’t fall apart or curl up when it has water on it. If you put water on normal paper, the paper will not react well. GSM is the type of grading that is used for different paper. It stands for Grams per square meter and the higher the number, the thicker the paper. Watercolour paper is usually bumpy too but you can find paper that is smooth.