The Worst Mistake Acrylic Painters Make? The REAL truth!

oh thank you for this,i got some great Meeden acrylics in 1 litre tubs they are heavy body i want to thin them .i make beautiful papers with the thick paint they stick together so i will thin them ,this is good news

Into the gesso it goes

lol all my paintings are acrylic and all have had water added and not a single thing has ever happened to any of those paintings. They are as vibrant now as the day i painted them. The internet has turned into the worse place to get information.

Thank you I watched that video and she sounded like an authority on the subject

What makes your paints crack. I used paint and water and I put a little of a medium.... should I leave the medium out if I use water. Oh and I used some glue..What am I doing wrong?😮😮😢😢

About 20 yrs. ago we had a representative from Liquitex give a presentation at our class in college and she explained how the molecules could separate in the paint if you used too much water. She then suggested we use airbrush medium instead of water. For quite some time after that i used the airbrush medium and gradually went back to using water as it was more convenient and nothing seemed to happen to the paintings I had used water on.. Thank you for this video which clears up this misconception.

You're not old

Thank you for clarifying that! I just seen that video literally two videos before yours popped up and I really believe her about the molecules and the way she explained it… I have actually been trying to find the differences in acrylic ink and how you can use it like watercolors and if you can make it with regular acrylic paint because I am new to flash art painting it’s been a challenge if you have any information for me please let me know thank you 🙏

Can you please tell me if Liquitex acrylic paint contains latex?

This video is throwing me off from the lighting coming from your screen. It's giving you a blue eye haha.

My wife used the liquitex Basics paints when she was starting out. The color faded over a few years so she switched to the liquitex professional paints. Better results for sure.

Great video, thanks for posting! To add to this, twenty years ago I painted a terracotta pot with ultramarine Liquitex basics, straight out of the tube, thinned with a good bit of water to make it spread and hold on to the pot. This has been sitting out in the Southern California sun now since it was painted in all kinds of weather and not only is the paint all still there but it is as brilliant and full of color as the day it was painted. The paint has not faded one bit. Acrylics are some of the best paints there are and will take a beating!

Obviously does not understand the science of binders in acrylic paint. DO NOT USE WATER!

A famous local artist paints with watered-down acrylics. I went to her large studio, and she happened to be there that day; what a treat for me! I asked her how she gets such beautiful detail.....she said "lots of water".

Question: if you start a painting with a wash that used too much water, is it wise to paint over it, or will future layers of paint be at risk of flaking & peeling due to the early overly-thinned wash underneath?

Not a headache for me because I don't care,lol,I'm gonna do me

Whoever the expert was who said no water.. what do they think makes the acrylic paint liquid in production and makes it water clean up.
The best water for acrylic paint is Acqua Panna or plain tap water through a BRITA filter.
BTW I go to settings and then to Play Back Speed and tone it down to .75.

Lol look at that chunky little bird 🐦

would be nice if you linked or named the video you're talking about, so people could look it up themselves..

Maybe she was using student grade acrylics?

I bought a An Acrylic painting Course (luckily on offer) which said you must glaze between each layer, which i wasn't sure about, so i searched and found that this was not the case with other, professional artists, so thank you for confirming this

We newbies need these “unhack” videos!
Thank you Lisa!!

I wanted to add a comment to support you Lisa. Thanks for your video. As you say, the quality of the paint is everything, and understanding how acrylic works is essential. As it happens, David Jansen just recently provided a very in depth discussion of this topic on You Tube in his How To Use Acrylics Like Oils Video. I have already listened to it a couple of times, and will listen again many more times. Not only is David an artist and teacher, he is also a chemist and had formulated paint for several companies in his earlier career. There is a use for water, mediums and extenders with acrylic paint depending on the type of painting you do and where you live and now I know why. I almost gave up on any kind of acrylic art. I live in the desert. Today is a typical 90 degrees and 4% humidity. I need to use all these tools, and now that I’ve been educated by David I can enjoy acrylics (I was a former oil painter). All of your tips, information and examples are so helpful. Thank you again for supporting and helping us.

Is the video you're referring to the one that says to thin your paint using airbrush medium for toning a canvas?

I think I saw the video and it's great to hear from you. Acrylics is water soluble medium and the only major difference between acrylics and watercolour or gouache (afaik) is the fact, that acrylic contains plastic. Also, with this all being said by that person, Holbein's acrylic gouache could not exist. :D

I have a question. I get my water from a well and it's very hard water, lots of calcium and whatnot, very easy to get soap off ya after you shower.

My parents get city water which is very soft. When you wash your hands it takes forever to get the soap off.

Has anybody ever noticed a difference between thinning acrylics with hard vs soft water? I wonder if the paint would be smoother going on the canvas with very soft water.

there is another video from CLIVE5 saying the same thing about a 30% MAX WATER RULE. I made a comment in that video and it was deleted... so whatever

I am trying to make a paint pendulum, for that, up to how much water can I add to acrylic paint...any idea?

Thank you for the public service! I have been adding water to my Golden acrylics for years. :)

Good job

Best thing about that video is that her explanation of underbinding also completely obliterates watercolors and oil paints because you also dilute the binder with either water or oms lol

Crazy. I have around a dozen hand painted - with acrylics that I surely thinned with water as needed, then varnished. They're still as bright, strong and beautiful as the day they were made.

I have a somewhat different take. When I thin my acrylic paint with a lot of water - maybe 40-50% - I often have trouble getting the paint to stick, especially if I am painting over an existing layer of paint. As you say, once it has dried, the watery paint is perfectly durable, but I have often been intensely frustrated when I stroke the loaded brush over the previous layer of (dry) paint and paint just won't come off the brush. Anyone else have this issue? Lisa?

While I don’t particularly use water to water down my acrylics, I’ve NEVER heard this before or experienced this before in this manner due to watered down paints and I, too, have been painting for nearly 30 years myself! I can’t even get water to get the acrylic paint off my paintbrushes because it won’t break down in just water! 😂😂 acrylic paint is essentially made with acrylic….or PLASTIC binders. Once it dries, it’s basically a layer of PLASTIC! While it CAN chip off the surface it’s painted on, it does this not because of the water that it’s mixed with but because it doesn’t completely adhere to the surface it’s put on. This is why you can peel it off of some things very easily (like off you palette) and others not so much (like your canvas or off of other surfaces like wood).

Daler-Rowney can't be that bad. They are a British company that have been going since 1783.

I used to listen to all art advice when I started, that is until I started getting knocked around by contradictions. I've learned since that the only way to really know is to test it out for yourself in the cheapest, quickest way possible.

OMG I'm so glad you're bringing this up. I seen that video 🤣🤣🤣 I won't listen to anything else she says, that's for sure. Thanks for the knowledge.

Acrylics and water are born to be together.

The only instance I can think where using to much water is an issue is acrylic paint pouring. But painting traditionally.. hell no! <3 thanks Lisa

Thank you.

I remember a video like that, it's been around for a while. Or is there a new one out now? I gotta have to check. Of course you can mix acrylics with water, I am surprised that someone who has painted with acrylics before would even doubt this. It's not like I'm some huge acrylics painter, this is actually a medium that I use quite rarely, but when I do I will use as much water as I want. Never ran into problems with this. If the plastic stuff in the paint would not connect properly, one should notice this immediately, and I have never seen that. As you said, it is thinkable that the gesso or structure paste or something might not provide a good surface and the paint will flake, but that is so entirely different than the paint not being able to set properly, and flaking off from problematic surfaces can even happen with thick paint directly from the tube.

My brain doesn't understand watercolors. So I have thinned my acrylics down to watercolor consistency in order to do backgrounds on canvases before my finished paintings. Never had problems.

omg acrylic is litterely A WATER BASED MEDIUM- why people always try to make up this bs and make people scared...it's like as if someone said "u can not use water with watercolor"... WGAT IS THE MEANING OF THAT VIDEO?!

I have used acrylic paint even on my stairs, 20 yrs and still look good.

I think not liking results is a bad argument. You are just not used to the medium so you are not getting what you want. But yeah you don't need to use what you don't want. And at the end if you can't get what you want from a tool when you need it you don't have to use it.

At the end i would still prefer information from chemists that make the paint. Not just personal experience. I'll take a look at that Golden paints video. But a while back it's their website where I found info on why you shouldn't use water.

I once mixed my own pouring paint and I added too much water in it. It didn't give me the consistance I wanted and it was more water than paint. That's a mistake that I made a year or 2 ago. I do now mix water and some medium to make my pouring paint. Enough water with some medium in to make thick enough and fluid enough to be able to pour it on my support (wooden plank mostly).

Have no problems when using water with acrylic paints, as with anything like painting or cooking it is the amount of a liquid that you use or don't that, makes all the difference to the end product.

Once I saw that video I didn't believe it because I like to use super water-thined acrylics and never had a problem. I even have used it to tint wood slats as artist frames. Why keep the misinformation up and not put up a correction is beyond me, they would get even more views and interaction with their stuff.