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Re: Acrylics drying WAY too fast!
I do plein air acrylic painting outside in West Texas - hot, dry, windyconditions where acrylics dry very fast.
In this weather,i believe high load pigment paints like Sennelier and Golden (regular) dry up very fast (under two minutes), while Liquitex and student grades are more forgiving. So I use Liquitex more often for outdoors work.
In the most extreme drying cases, I do my first pass with acrylics diluted with a mister (sometimes as far as watercolor consistency), then add layers with matte medium thinned paints. Finish up in the hotel room with full strength pigments.
I should use a retarder, but as I have grown in my painting skills, I have become more sensitive to diluting my paints with mediums instead of using full strength. Also,I use white liquid gesso instead of TiO2 white to tint, which buys more delay in drying time and makes mixing colors easier.
Stay wet palette. -works great indoors,too bulky and hard to secure in windy conditions. Indoors, I do my color mixing with a knife on a piece of thick glass,then transfer mixed color back to the stay-wet or into a pill bottle. Glass seems to be less drying then a ceramic dish,but I don't know why.
Golden Open Acrylics -great idea,just need to banish water from your work place and use only opens acrylics. If you mix with other paints or spray water, the drying advantage goes away. Also,much above 85 F,the stay-open advantage goes away. Have not tried Chroma Atelier.
ORGANIZING PAINTS: Organizing your paints will buy you more time to paint with your quickly drying paints instead of fumbling around for the right tube, especially outdoors.
I organize my paints on binder rings by color - yellows, blues, reds, earths. The Liquitex tubes have a hole punched out in the bottom for the rack display which is very handy. Repair torn holes and add non-liquitex brands with duct tape. Pick up paints by the ring,not the tubes.
Happy Painting.
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