As a Professional Artist it’s important that I use the best quality materials that I can to ensure that my paintings remain as vibrant and colourful as the day that I painted them.
Acrylic paint is given a Lightfastness Rating, one of my favourite brands is Golden, they go to extraordinary lengths to test all their paint. If you’re interested you can read all about what they do HERE
I personally don’t varnish my paintings as I like the contrast between areas of matt paint and the more gloss areas. I also think that the texture is more emphasised that way and varnish will not ‘puddle’ in the lower areas of the canvas. I use various mediums to create extra shine, a particular favourite of mine is Liquitex String Gel, you can read all about it (and buy it) HERE This gives an extra dimension to my grasses along with sparkle mediums, which makes the painting come alive and look different depending on the light.
For my smaller paintings I generally use canvas boards and for larger pieces I use stretched canvasses. I love LOXLEY as the tooth of the canvas just seems to suit the way that I work and I also know that the quality will always be great. I particularly like their large ‘box’ canvases. These are deep so look lovely hung straight on the wall without framing to give a contemporary look. They are finished off beautifully on the reverse with no nasty staples on the sides.
Next time I shall be talking about my brushes and exploring the marks that they can make. If you have any questions or comments please do comment below and I’ll answer them. Thank you for reading,
