Carl Judson - Guerrilla Painter Notebook

Confessions of a Turncoat
Spring 2007

Confessions of a Turncoat– Or, How I Stopped Being Snooty and Learned to Love Acrylics

In over 20 years of plein air painting, I always looked down my nose at acrylics. For one thing, I never minded the slow drying time of oils…and besides, oils are so classy. With some urging from others, I tried acrylics one day using a Guerrilla/Sta-Wet Palette. It was OK, but I went back to my oils. Three months later, I noticed the Sta-Wet Palette in my studio and opened it up – the acrylics were still wet and ready to use – that had to be good for something!

Then I took a short trip and came back with a couple of nice little acrylic paintings. This time, I had prepared some textured and colored panels using acrylic paint applied to canvas boards with a palette knife and a broken comb. The result was a rich surface, and it was difficult to tell that the paintings were acrylic and not oils.

Cascade Fall Rain, Startup WA
Carl Judson © 2006
Acrylic on canvas, 7½" x 10".

Still not a convert, several months went by and then I had a chance to take a two week spin to the west coast and back through Montana. I decided to really give acrylics a try. Two paintings later in the middle of Nevada I was kicking myself for wasting my trip on acrylics, but it was too late to turn back.

Among my problems were the fact that acrylics are more transparent than oils and the texture didn’t hold up. Painting in the manner of my oil painting was not working for me. By the time I got to Northern California, I had developed a different approach and was getting to be more and more pleased.

Track Hoes Redding, CA
Carl Judson © 2006
Acrylic on canvas, 7½" x 10".

One trick was to return to preparing those
textured and colored acrylic canvas boards (see below).

Another adjustment that I made was to take advantage of the rapid-drying acrylics. I put out twice as many colors on my palette and began using them more like pastels – layering on the painting with less mixing on the palette. The layering was curing the transparency problem and the textured surface was yielding increasing richness and complexity with each successive color layer.

If you want to keep paint on the Sta-Wet Palette between sessions, the paint runs all over the place unless you keep the palette flat. I modified my pochade box by moving the handle from the side of the box to the top so that the palette would be flat when I carried the box.

The Sta-Wet Palette wicks moisture up from the sponge underneath and mixes tend to get watered down, so it’s nice to have a dry mixing surface handy, too. I used some Velcro® dots to hold the lid of the palette in place on the palette extension, which provides additional dry mixing space.

Between using the acrylics like pastels and the extra mixing space afforded by my “rig”, I felt comfortable painting on larger panels, so I used a Slip-In Easel to hold them while I painted.

If you’re painting in one session, there are some things that you can do in oil that you can’t do easily, or at all, in acrylics – and vice versa. With acrylics, in addition to layering colors one over the other in rapid succession, you can scumble and glaze easily, creating effects that are difficult in one-session oil paintings.

Another nice thing is that transporting
acrylic paintings is less problematic than oils, but don’t get lulled into complacency – they will scratch and discolor if they are allowed to rub together.