Posts Tagged: favorite art materials

Favorite Art Materials: Liquitex Acrylic Pouring Medium

I talked about acrylic pouring last week and in that post, I mentioned one of my current favorite art materials: Liquitex Pouring Medium . I thought for today’s post I would expand on that a bit.  I really (really!) like this stuff and I go through a shockingly large amount of it when I’m working on abstract pieces. It’s super satisfying, the way the paint mixes and flows when this medium is mixed in.

Pouring mediums dilute the paint to make it more fluid while retaining the color and binding properties of the undiluted paint. It also helps to prevent cracking and crazing of the thinned paint. Liquitex does warn that cracking and crazing can occur “when flow heights are very uneven” and they recommend that your poured surface is kept level as it dries. But I’ve never personally experienced and cracking and my poured surfaces are frequently Very unlevel!

The amount of paint versus pouring medium depends on the consistency of the paint you are using, but you typically don’t need a lot of paint to get a good, intense color. I just add some paint to a cup or container (I find the single-serve yogurt containers work well), then squeeze in some pouring medium and stir it gently. If it’s not fluid enough, I continue adding pouring medium until I get the consistency I want. Super easy and it’s very forgiving of the paint-to-medium ratio. I’ve honestly never had a mixture fail or cause any issues, and I’m definitely not at all precise in measuring (“Yeah, that looks good enough”).

Mares of Diomedes acrylic poured painting by Tamara Jaeger
“Mares of Diomedes” by Tamara Jaeger

As far as working with the mixed and thinned paint, I’ve used in with wet-on-wet layers and wet-on-dry layers on a flat surface as well as wet-on-wet pouring in drips and drops and streams all over some highly uneven surfaces. You can obtain a wide range of effects depending on how you apply it. I like pouring it in thin streams along the high points of my abstract pieces and allowing it to pool in the lower areas. Tilting and rotating the canvas allows the colors to mix and swirl in interesting and unpredictable ways. I used this particular technique in many of the pieces in my “Elementals” series.

Pixie air elemental mixed media acrylic painting by Tamara Jaeger
“Pixie” Air Elemental by Tamara Jaeger

Have you tried Liquitex Pouring Medium? What did you think? Have you tried any other types of pouring mediums? Tell me in the comments.

* Please note that this post contains affiliate links and any sales made through such links will reward me a small commission – at no extra cost for you. 

Favorites: Golden Soft gel medium

Soft Gel - Gloss
Golden Soft Gel Medium

In my previous blog post, here, I talked a bit one of my go-to art materials when working on my 3-D mixed media paintings: acrylic soft gel medium. I typically use Golden Soft Gel Medium, since it’s readily available in several of the big art and craft supply stores and I like its working properties.  It can also be purchased in larger size containers online, which is what I typically do since I go through a lot of it.


Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels

Acrylic gel mediums are used to increase the transparency of acrylic paint without compromising its consistency or adhesive properties. Thicker, heavy body mediums are used to provide texture and add body to paint for impasto effects, allowing the paint to retain brushstrokes and knife marks. However, I generally use gel mediums as an adhesive in my mixed media pieces.

"Glacier" by Tamara Jaeger. Mixed media acrylic with textile and crushed glass
“Glacier” by Tamara Jaeger. Mixed media acrylic with textile and crushed glass

I like Golden’s Soft Gel Medium because it’s thick enough to fill in gaps and make a good, strong bond and it remains flexible once dry. Flexibility is an important consideration when working with organic materials, since they will flex, shrink and swell with changes in humidity. It’s also important with inorganic materials like stone or glass, since the canvas substrate of my pieces will flex with temperature and humidity changes while the inorganic parts will not. Having the ‘glue’ remain flexible allows the whole piece to hold together better and prevents pieces from popping off the canvas over time.

Golden’s Soft Gel Medium can be a little expensive, but it’s high quality and archival. It comes in several surface sheens but I usually just get the gloss version. I tend to paint over it anyway, so the surface sheen isn’t important to me. The gloss version doesn’t contain the extra mattifying agents that the other versions do and tends to be more transparent, which is important if I’m using it to attach materials like glass fragments that need to be seen through the gel medium.

Buying it in larger containers online tends to be more economical, but I’ve also purchased it using coupons at Michaels when I don’t want to wait for it to get shipped to me.

Have you tried any acrylic mediums? How do you use them in your work?

* Please note that this post contains affiliate links and any sales made through such links will reward me a small commission – at no extra cost for you.