What is the Difference Between Water and Acrylic Colour?

 

Even though both acrylics and watercolours are water soluble, their uses are not always the same. Knowing their distinctions will enable you to choose the one that works best for your desired effects or painting techniques.

  • The Variation in Ingredients

Traditional watercolour binders, employed between the 16th and 18th centuries, included sugars and hide glues. By the 19th century, natural gum arabic was chosen as a binder because of its flexibility and solubility. Sometimes, people added glycerin or honey to the gum arabic for even more benefits. More chemicals are added to the mix to extend the paint’s durability.

Out of the three basic ingredients-pigment, binder, and vehicle-acrylic binders are responsible for the paint’s overall quality. The pigment and vehicle influence the colour’s quality and how easily you may apply it. You may alter the value and intensity of a combination while working with acrylics by adding white colour pigmentation to lighten a hue.

  • The Difference in Paint Types

You may buy watercolours in either cakes/pans or tubes. The two are rather similar in terms of overall consistency. It is extremely convenient to start painting with those packaged in pans. The ones sold in tubes are more concentrated than those sold in pans. When mixing a large quantity of paint for washes over expansive regions or portions of your painting, it is considerably easier to employ paint from a tube.

If your watercolours dry out on the palette, add water to revive them.

In contrast, acrylic paint is sold in jars, bottles, tubes, and tubs. Additionally, there are three degrees of viscosity. Light viscosity acrylics are identified by labels like “fluid” or “soft body.” The ones with a medium viscosity have an oil paint-like consistency. And acrylics with high viscosities are often described as having a “ heavy body.” Fluid acrylics are great if you plan on using a lot of glazing in your paintings to make them seem more realistic. However, the heavier-bodied ones are the best choice if you use a lot of texture and brushwork in your paintings.

It is not possible to revive a dried-out acrylic paint colour. For this reason, keeping the lids and caps on is crucial.

  • Opaqueness or Transparency

Water colours come in a wide variety of transparency levels. They may vary from being completely opaque to being highly transparent. Watercolours shine when their varying degrees of opaqueness is put to good use.

Due to the typical application method, acrylics often have a brighter hue than watercolours. They may also be diluted to a translucent or semi-transparent consistency, although this results in a milkier finish than water colour’s crisper clarity. They are comparable to oil paint in terms of opaqueness.

  • The Variation in the Use of Whites

When working with watercolour, white is seldom used to brighten colours. The primary reason is that adding white will obscure the transparency of your combination and make your colours more opaque.

White may be used with acrylics to adjust the value and intensity of a composition as well as to lighten a hue. It’s preferable to add it in modest amounts.

Conclusion

These are the primary distinctions between acrylic and watercolour. Minimalist artists should choose watercolour as their preferred medium. Comparatively, acrylic is far more forgiving since errors are readily concealed. Also, it is flexible, so you may utilise it in various ways and play with it without any trouble. There’s nothing better than giving them both a try and figuring out your inclinations and personal style!

Buy Acrylic, watercolour and other art colours at KokuyoCamlin.com

Originally published at http://kokuyocamlin.wordpress.com on December 21, 2022.

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