Personally...I only put out about a dime size amount of paint, and for what I do....and how quickly I do what I do, I don't as a rule have problems with paint drying out.
If I intend to paint knowing I'm going to take a break, the convenience with the styrofoam plates is I'll turn the plate upside down on top of a used gallon plastic ice cream pale. In the bottom of the pale I'll have about 2-3 inches of water which then acts as a humidifier in the enclosed air space between the water at the bottom and the plate.
I've been able to walk away from such a plate and come back several days later and the paint is still wet enough to use.
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I have used acrylics plein air painting...as I have pastel and watercolor. I do the later to create an assemblance of works I can refer to as my affordables, basically only matting and shrink wrapping those.
Acrylics are kind of the no fuss no muss medium really.
However...to be honest...when I'm standing before nature in a live situation...I am aware of so much drama and play of light, and the effects of light on texture. I think it is that rich play of light and color with the immense three D texture smacking me in the face that I prefer my oils. They apply very thick, and my copal medium assures the buttery paint to stay as I applied it.
Now...I often use Liquitex Extender medium which used to be called "gelex" which gives the acrylics some body, some thickness that refrains flattening from water evaporation. IT leaves the paint with an oil-like thickness....and I have a number of stories and experiences where galleries took my acrylic pieces and mislabled them as oils.
Oil though...will itself being more full bodied and three dimensional by its very nature attract and absorb light, and within itself the light will bounce around in the oil binder and pigments to produce a jewel like glow that acrylics due to their more opaque and flat nature cannot do. The water in the acrylic dries...and the polymer binder does not and cannot do that same phenomena that oils will.
So...when I want to imitate the richness and brilliance of color intensity that I see outdoors....I keep coming back to oils for more adequately imitating such.
Note....I'm not saying "superiority"....of one medium over the other. I am not a promoter of a medium. Not a purist. I don't puff myself up with pride to proclaim myself a this or that. What is important to me is the final image...and does it work to pull out of me the sense of aesthetic need I had to do the work to begin with? Sometimes its the stroke and painterliness of a pastel stick that does that. Sometimes the crispness of a masking area of white with watercolor...and so forth. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.
Acrylics is speed, convenience, quick drying...slap on a frame and go, and so forth.
I'll be delivering roughly 20 paintings by this weeks end or beginning of next week. I have a spare 8"x10" frame that's been laying around and my intention is that this work will go with me. Can't do that with oils!
One thing I am toying with is using acrylics for my largest of plein airs.
I admire and aspire to do some huge works as did Buck County legend landscapist/alla prima plein airist Edward Redfield, who work in the late 1800's to near mid 1900's. His canvases were tied to trees and were as large as 50" x 56"...and done in oils. Started, and finished in one day. Amazing.
check out AskArt.com link for Redfield samples-
http://www.askart.com/theartist.asp?id=23606
click onto the Image gallery and you'll be allowed (as a nonmember) to see five of his works.
After some discussion with a number of artists in the plein air forum on this topic...we pondered upon the common sense possibility and ease of taking a preprimed/gessoed canvas rolled up with stretcher bars apart and carrying that back into deep forests and country where I often most paint.
I had horrible imaginings trying to figure out how to wrestle out of the woods a very large painting done with oils fighting wind, fighting bugs....brush and trees.
With acrylics...I could quickly put together the stretcher frames, temporarily staple the canvas on...paint with the acrylics...and five minutes after putting my easel together for carrying simply pull out the staples, roll the large canvas back up...and walk my way back out of the woods. Later, I could restretch the canvas and permanently mount on board or staple to stretcher bars and frame.
So...I'll carry plenty of the thickening gel medium for impasto effect when I do....I'll have to try that yet at least once this summer so I can report on it. I owe that much to everyone that was involved in that discussion....
Larry
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