Like you, we love to create. The products we sell to you are the exact same products we use ourselves. This gives us unrivalled product knowledge and, over the years, we’ve formed expert opinions on the qualities all of our items contain. Our acrylic paints are no exception. We appreciate all of their different characteristics, and if you love working with acrylics as much as we do, we thought we’d share our opinions on the brands we stock.
- Daler Rowney Graduate Acrylic is an affordable range of water-based colours boasting good pigment strength and an easy flow across paper, primed surfaces and canvas, indoors or outdoors. One of the biggest advantages of Daler Rowney Graduate Acrylics to schools and hobbyists is that artwork can be dried and stored away shortly after an art class has been completed, and it won’t smudge if water is spilled on the surface of the painting. Paper and canvas coated with Graduate Acrylic can be loosely rolled and stored without fear of cracking.
- Winsor & Newton is very reasonably priced for a world-leading brand. This is a high-quality acrylic paint that’s easy to work with, smooth, not too thick nor too thin and it is fully lightfast. These are simply great paints, with good coverage, wonderful colour, and easy cleanup. These acrylics can be used on a variety of surfaces and straight from the tube, diluted, or mixed with other acrylic mediums and gels.
- Atelier is well suited for longer painting sessions as well as fast drying techniques. How can one paint do both? Easy! This is a traditionally fast-drying acrylic colour but it also has a unique quality – if you add a few drops of Unlocking Formula it will stay wet for longer, allowing you to blend your colours. Atelier is a full-bodied acrylic that blends like oils and, crucially, the colour is the same wet or dry. It's thick and lustrous and richly coloured, with a little going a long way. It mixes nicely with other acrylic paints or with white or medium, and paints well on paper or canvas.
- Liquitex is one of the original acrylics and a good bargain brand for new artists. Compared with some other brands, these acrylics are fairly inexpensive but offer high-quality paint with a creamy texture and clean, vibrant colours. We recommend Liquitex for beginners and students; the paint is not too runny but not too thick either, and it does its job very well on a multitude of surfaces.
- Reeves acrylics are highly pigmented, flexible when dry and can be easily cleaned up with water. Reeves is extremely versatile and comes in a range of beautifully vibrant colours. You can use this acrylic on surfaces like canvas, paper, wood, fabric and more. Each colour is individually packaged in its own tube so you only have to take out what you need. These paints are water based and with minimal colour shift when they go from wet to dry. The high gloss finish means you don't have to add mediums for a polished look.
- Jo Sonja is one of our favourites as it is extremely affordable, smooth and creamy, with wonderful colours too. This paint has a matte finish so it photographs well. The colour selection is more varied than many other brands and we can reduce the paint to use in very thin layers. Jo Sonja dries fast and mixes well with other acrylics. They're a little more on the soft-bodied side, and some colours are thinner than others, but overall this is a good acrylic for artists on a budget.
- The Derivan Artist range of 24 acrylic colours cover the full spectrum and they’re water-resistant and lightfast. Derivan Artist is equivalent in colour strength and permanency to most professional grades but is much more affordable. Derivan Artist will give equally fantastic results used as a thick impasto paint or with the use of water and Derivan mediums as a watercolour, screen printing ink on paper, airbrushing or fabric paint. This range is non-toxic and water-based and recommended for professional artists and tertiary students alike.
- Chromacryl is a high quality and versatile student grade acrylic that can be used for all kinds of painting, collage, stained glass effects, as an adhesive for waste material constructions and as an ink for block and screen printing including textiles. The paint is thick with strong colour and excellent covering power. As with a real artist's acrylic, students can create amazing textures, overpaint and glaze. Chromacryl is a non-toxic acrylic that dries to a silky lustre.
These are our opinions on our acrylics. They bring different things to different skill and experience levels, so there really is something for everyone. For more thoughts on our bold and brilliant acrylic paints, get in touch and we’ll happily share them with you.