More Acrylic Work

I've been working with acrylics now for a bit over a month, with occasional returns to my oils. You can see all the paintings I've done on my painting blog, Nel's Everyday Painting (link in sidebar.) I added a Masterson Stay-Wet palette to my equipment and that has made a big difference. It has a fitted flat sponge in the bottom of an edged tray, and special palette paper made to be permeable (you soak it in hot water for 15 minutes) then lay it on top of the flat, wet sponge. It keeps the paints wet (almost runny sometimes) but you aren't constantly battling against paints drying out. I also got some glazing medium, and did the painting above with lots of glaze layers. It gives you a nice glowing build up of thin layers of paint. Very nice to work with. (But you do have to have patience to keep adding layers.) You can see in the dark water how deep you can get the colors, and still have them read as color. The blending continues to be a challenge, some days it seems to flow, and other days I completely forget how to do it. Odd, huh? But overall, I like these paints, and am getting comfortable working with them. Here's today's painting:

There's not much blending in it, and for this kind of a painting, with all the tree limbs and branches, it's nice to have a dry surface to paint all those lines on. With the liquifying medium and a variety of colors, you can put some limbs further back, some deeper and darker, to bring them forward. You learn to use the advantages of acrylics after awhile I think.