A Happy Find

I finally broke down and bought some books I've been wanting. I figure, if I'm going to be at home with all this time on my hands, why not have some great craft books to inspire and instruct me?

One of those books is called Acrylic Revolution: New Tricks and Techniques for Working with the World's Most Versatile Medium. Not only does it have great information about and techniques for using acrylic paints, but it explains what all those acrylic gels and mediums are for, and what you can do with them. Who knew that Golden's Tar Gel was so cool? Or that pumice gel created such a wonderful effect?

In addition to the standard painting techniques (washes, brayering, sponging, etc.), the book provides detailed instructions for techniques I've never even heard of. Did you know that you can peel dried acrylic off of a slick surface and reuse it? Or that opaque acrylics can be made transparent?

I've seen some of the techniques in various books and magazines in the past: alcohol over acrylic to "pull" the paint up; using acrylic gels to mimic the look of encaustics or oil paints. I could probably spend a couple of hours looking through old magazines to find the instructions for those techniques (assuming I didn't get sidetracked and go off on some tangent, which is likely). This book, though, brings those techniques all together. It also has a hard cover and that cool spiral binding so that the book lies flat so that you can reference it while you're working.

If you work with (or want to work with) acrylic paints, gels, or mediums, this book should definitely be in your library. The only thing I regret about buying this book is that I didn't do so a very long time ago!

And now, I'm off to play with acrylics!