Acrylic Painting Techniques: How to Master the Medium of Our Age

Who would have thought that synthetic acrylic paint, a still-young medium with a plastic polymer base, would become the most versatile and exciting painting medium in the twenty-five years since it appeared? Today, acrylics are being used by more painters—and with more dazzling results—than any other medium.

Acrylic Painting Techniques shows you why, as it explores the full range of what you can achieve with these durable, inexpensive, easy-to-use, and fast-drying paints.

Author Stephen Quiller has researched the most up-to-date materials available, the many and varied paints and mediums, and he gives good counsel concerning the brushes, palettes, and painting surfaces the acrylic painter ought to have. To prepare the reader to exploit the richness and vibrancy of acrylics, he also offers a lesson on basic color relationships, illustrated with a color wheel he has devised for acrylics. From there he thoroughly explores all the painting techniques that unleash the power of acrylics.

In the creation of images, the same acrylic paints can be utilized transparently, translucently, or opaquely. The author shows not only how the techniques of painting in watercolor and oil can be applied using acrylics, but also how their versatility is greatly extended with gels, acrylic gouaches, metallic colors, and gessos. The important differences between the other media and acrylics are carefully explained, and the demonstrations of how different media-including charcoal, Conte crayon, and casein—can be integrated into one composition will spark any painter's creativity.

Throughout, Quiller's full-color studies and finished paintings illuminate his text. The reader gains a greater understanding of the use of acrylics by examining the step-by-step development of numerous beautiful works, and then by applying the techniques in a series of exercises at the end of each lesson.

Always in search of the ways to communicate in his art a love for the natural landscape, the author shows how he has explored the potential of acrylic painting to achieve the most exciting and satisfying results. His deeper message is that by learning to master this brilliant medium, you will expand upon your own powers of artistic self-expression.

• Teaches the tips and techniques used by professional artists in clear, easy-to-follow exercises

• Fully illustrated with hundreds of dazzling color reproductions of finished paintings

This all-in-one sourcebook demonstrates how every artist can create expert images with acrylic paints. Step-by-step lessons detail how to paint with gels, gouaches, metallics, gessos; combine acrylics with charcoal, Conte crayon, and casein; and more.

Stephen Quiller graduated from Colorado State University and has been painting full-time in watermedia since 1972. His paintings are represented in many corporate, public, and private collections nationwide. Quiller has produced three other books published by Watson-Guptill: With Barbara Whipple he co-authored Water Media Techniques and Water Media: Processes and Possibilities; his Color Choices, a book on color for painters, was published in 1989. Quiller conducts artist workshops throughout North America each year, and he has made a number of videotapes on watermedia and color, produced by Crystal Productions. He lives with his wife Marta and their two children, Christopher and Allison, in Creede, Colorado. His work is available at the Quiller in Creede and at the Mission in Taos, New Mexico.