Why I Paint with Acrylics

"Matchbox Cars with Beetle," acrylic on panel, 8" x 8", by Kim Testone

When I began teaching myself to paint realistically a few years ago, I started in oils. I'll be honest - I was a bit of an oil painting snob. I wasn't great at it, but I was determined to learn because that's what all of the great artists used - or so I thought.

Oil painting has a great many technical challenges that I just didn't have the patience for. While it blends beautifully and has a wonderful soft quality, it takes too long to dry, and it can have problems years down the road. I also liked layering and glazing my oils, but that meant weeks or months of work on a painting, waiting for my layers to dry. Because I preferred to paint with thinner layers, instead of direct painting most of the time, I had to use various mediums that were somewhat toxic, to both me and my pets. Speaking of pets, the wet oil paint attracts cat hair and dust like a magnet. And so, after a couple of years of picking all of the daily dust and cat hair out of my wet paintings with a pair of tweezers, I decided that I needed to cut myself off and head toward acrylics.

But oh, the problems with acrylics. I went to college for art many years ago, and learned to paint using acrylics. And I was terrible. I mean really really bad. Only after a lot of experimentation and reading and research did I come to realize that I had learned terrible painting techniques in college, and if I really wanted to be a realist painter - even a decent realist painter - I had a lot to learn. And I want to share what I have learned in the last few years with you here, because I want everyone who wants to learn to paint in acrylics to be able to do so without the frustrations that I think naturally come with it.

"Nutty Buddy," acrylic on panel, 8" x 8".

This won't be a super-easy journey, but I am going to try to make it a much clearer journey for you. On this blog, I plan to explore all of the various realistic acrylic painting techniques I've learned, as well as those by other great acrylic artists.

If you've tried using acrylics in the past and tossed them aside out of frustration, or if you are currently working in oils or watercolors and experiencing frustrations with them, I hope you'll enjoy the content I share on this site, and begin to love painting again.

Thanks for visiting!

Kim T.