I know you’re not supposed to do it, but I did.
I’ve been mixing 2 types of paint in a single painting.
It’s generally not recommended to do it, since drying times will vary between paint types and the different elements in each paint type may not mix well together and can ruin the painting.
I however, haven’t followed the rules. A few acrylic paintings I did recently have been sitting around, nearly finished, but not quite (it’s hard sometimes to figure out when a painting is “done”). I kept looking at them propped up around my apartment trying to figure out what they needed or whether they were too ugly to invest more time in.
One of them I finally decided to continue and painted bulblike flowers in oil paint (I use Windsor and Newton oil paint I had leftover from a class several years ago) over the acrylic paints. Painting oil over dried acrylics didn’t result in a disaster, fortunately. I think painting the oil over dried acrylic paint made the difference.
The difference between the two paints on the canvas was certainly noticeable, but not in a bad way. With acrylic, mixing different colors needs to happen immediately on the canvas or be pre-mixed because it dries so quickly (you can use a palette wetting spray to slow the paint drying time but I use acrylic glazing liquid which can also extend the working time of your acrylics). If you mix paint directly on the canvas the blending isn’t always seamless (which could be the effect you want) and you can preserve the distinct colors on the canvas without them blending too much.
With oils however, you can very seamlessly blend color together and create a beautiful, subtle effect in the color variation. What becomes difficult though is keeping those colors separate and over-blending becomes a problem because the paint stays wet for so long. Even with a dry brush that retains a bit of oil paint pigment if you don’t properly clean the brush before using a new color can get mixed into the new area of color. I wanted the flowers I painted to retain the little white flecks I kept but all the adjustments I kept making just blended the white more into the other color.
Seeing the contrast of the subtle blending of the oil paint over the acrylic which was mixed straight onto the canvas was interesting. Within the same painting I’m also using some mixed media elements — magazine paper (a favorite medium of mine) and seed beads for texture. We’ll see how it all works out in the end.
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