Glazing With Clear Painting Medium

Do you know that Atelier Clear Painting Medium has been loved by artists in Australia and all around the world for decades? Manufactured in our factories in Australia and the USA, Clear Painting Medium revolutionises your acrylic painting practice by customising your paint to achieve a variety of techniques. Used with Atelier Interactive Acrylic and Atelier A2 Acrylic, it helps create fine lines and details,  increases coverage, makes glazes and provides a longer working time when misted with water.

Many people will make the mistake of mixing in water with their acrylic paint to thin it down and then run into a lot of problems. Acrylic paint is a carefully balanced formula, and water acts like a solvent, not an extender. When too much water is added, it can increase the chance of cracking, cause uneven pigment distribution, and speed up the drying time, causing a patchy effect. Clear Painting Medium will thin out your paint but in a totally different way to water. Clear Painting Medium has a low viscosity that is thinner than acrylic paint but thicker than water. This is an important distinction as it keeps your pigments distributed evenly and prevents your pigments from being stretched too far.

The benefits of having the ability to adjust the consistency of the paint to a variety of viscosities (thicknesses) give you total control over your artwork. With a small quantity of one part Clear Painting Medium added to 3 parts Atelier Interactive or Atelier A2, your colour will maintain its intensity and be extended which increases the coverage of your paint. This is very useful when blocking in large areas or background layers. With a slightly higher ratio of one part Clear Painting Medium to two parts Atelier Interactive and/or equal parts, you will notice that your paint will flow off your brush with ease and consistency. This enables you to create fine lines, crisp edges and precise details in your work. Our biggest tip for creating details is to ensure you use a soft brush with your thin paint. For example, a bristle brush is strong and perfect for thick paint but a soft Taklon brush is ideal with thin paint. Clear Painting Medium mixed in a high ratio, two parts or higher with one part Atelier Interactive, is ideal for glazing techniques.

Glazing is a classical painting technique that refers to applying your paint in thin, transparent layers to build up colours and details. There are many ways to glaze in painting these include: Grisaille, Wet to Dry Gradation, Tints and Tonal Adjusting. Painting Grisaille is when you begin with a grey tonal painting that is defined and finished, in that your artwork looks finished but it is in black and white. The colour is laid over the top in thin, transparent layers until the painting is at the desired vibrancy. It is recommended to use only transparent pigments for this technique. The theory behind using a “Grisaille” technique is that your colours will appear more vibrant as the light refracts through the film of pigments suspended in medium. This light refraction causes a higher level of depth and richness of colour compared to light bouncing off opaque paint. The Clear Painting Medium is an imperative part of this process because it creates transparent films, which is why this technique is so effective.

If you have ever painted with acrylic paint you will be familiar with the frustration of wanting to blend a new wet section into a dry section of your work. Clear Painting Medium allows you to seamlessly adjust your transparencies from completely opaque to completely transparent. This is so useful because it gives the illusion of your wet paint blending to what’s underneath, by simply playing with transparencies. This is known as “Wet to Dry Gradation”.

There are two methods you can use when applying this to your painting. Firstly you can brush pure medium onto the section you want to “blend” into. Be generous with your application of medium and exaggerate the surface area of the section; this allows for a more fail safe blend. While the medium is still wet apply your wet acrylic paint to the edge then blend into the medium. The other approach is the place your acrylic paint directly onto your painting and mix various ratios of medium into your paint on your palette, ranging from entirely paint through to entirely medium.

Creating a glaze can be useful when you’ve almost finished your work and you would like to make a few tweaks to the tone (lightness/darkness) or colours (tints). Let’s say that compositionally your subject looks too dark compared to the background but you don’t want to completely redo that section. Applying a glaze which is a mix of ten parts Clear Painting Medium and one part Atelier Interactive Titanium White, you can lighten all parts of your subjects without needing to completely start over! The same method can be applied to any colour change or tonal shift.

One of the great things about adding Clear Painting Medium to your Atelier Interactive Acrylics is that it allows your paint to hold more moisture! When painting in a warm, dry environment you may get frustrated with the speed in which your paint starts to dry. Misting your paint with water can help your paint stay wet for a little longer. If you mist your paint that has the Clear Painting Medium mixed with it, the water is better absorbed into your artwork and it will stay wet longer! Our best tip with misting is to use Chroma’s Fine Mist Water Sprayer.

We hope that this has opened your eyes and inspired your creativity to the various ways that Clear Painting Medium can propel your acrylic painting practice forward. Give it a try today and see for yourself just why this is our most loved acrylic medium!