Same owl – now with acrylics!
I’m continuing the experiment with colouring my cute owl with 3 different kinds of traditional “wet” media. In the last post I showed the stages of watercolours that I’ve done first, as I was suggested to do in a comment under my Facebook post. Since to do the markers version I need several more colours than I have (fortunately, they are on their way already!) – this time I’ve coloured the owl with acrylics.
Even though I’m very used to acrylics – I paint with them very often – this was actually a double experiment for me, because this was the first time I’ve used acrylic paints on paper rather than on canvas and additionally, I didn’t use my usual paints, but completely different, professional ones that I bought to participate in Royal Talens’s international competition.
It’s always good to know your media before you start creating something ambitious and time-consuming with them in order not to ruin the piece accidentally, so since I was going to have this little acrylics exercise anyway I thought it would be the perfect moment to learn my new paints too. Not to mention that I also got to test this new SM-LT paint paper I got recently.
Overall I have mixed feelings after finishing the acrylics version of the owl. Don’t get me wrong – it was very fun and I actually LOVE the final result but… For some reason I assumed painting with acrylics on paper would be easier and faster than painting with them on canvas and… it is NOT. I don’t think it’s harder either, it’s pretty much the same and I don’t know why I assumed differently. Maybe there would have been a difference if I used a different style/technique of painting, for example, if I used the acrylics like watercolours – diluted them heavily with water, but if I do everything the same way I shouldn’t expect different results. Unless the paper had very different features than the canvas but except being very smooth, unlike the canvas, the paper worked perfectly with the acrylics – neither the paints nor water soaked in it and it didn’t bend at all, no matter how much water I used on it.
The Rembrandt paints I used this time were very different from my usual ones though, so it had to take me a while to get used to them. They are much thicker than A’kryl and they mix with each other and with water differently than what I’m used to. Also when dry they are shinier than my cheaper paints. I thought I’d mind this shininess but, even though you can’t see it on the photos, the shine does look very nice and aesthetic, for some reason.
The time consumption and some difficulties with working with a partly new medium are the only things I can complain about though. The process of painting itself was fun and exciting and the final result – very satisfying. If I had more time (8 additional hours a day, for example), I could say I’d definitely paint more pieces with acrylics on paper like this, but because it’s just as time-consuming as painting on canvas I can’t promise it to anyone, including myself. On the other hand, I love the way the finished owl looks and it’s much easier to put it in frames later than even a simple canvas board, so it would be great to paint something with acrylics on paper again in the future, hopefully something more ambitious.
For now though – you can see my process of colouring the owlette with acrylics below which is much more interesting than just reading about it 😉 Let me know if you have any questions!
~LW
