Acrylic Painting
One of the many different painting techniques!
Acrylic paint is a great medium for beginners because it is relatively inexpensive, water-soluble, quick-drying, versatile, and forgiving.
If you are not happy with an area you've painted, you can let it dry and paint right over it in a matter of minutes. Because acrylic is a plastic polymer, you can paint on any surface as long as it doesn't contain wax or oil. Unlike oils, acrylics can be used without any toxic solvents and can be cleaned up easily with soap and water. Learn the tricks of the trade, and you can soon embrace your inner Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, or Rembrandt using a forgiving medium these artists never knew when they created their great works.
History of Acrylic Paint
Röhm invented acrylic resin, which was quickly transformed into acrylic paint. As early as 1934, the first usable acrylic resin dispersion was developed by German chemical company BASF, which was patented by Rohm and Haas. The synthetic paint was first used in the 1940s, combining some of the properties of oil and watercolor. Between 1946 and 1949, Leonard Bocour and Sam Golden invented a solution acrylic paint under the brand Magna paint. These were mineral spirit-based paints. Acrylics were made commercially available in the 1950s.
Water-based acrylic paints were subsequently sold as latex house paints, as latex is the technical term for a suspension of polymer microparticles in water. Interior latex house paints tend to be a combination of binder (sometimes acrylic, vinyl, pva, and others), filler, pigment, and water. Exterior latex house paints may also be a co-polymer blend, but the best exterior water-based paints are 100% acrylic, due to elasticity and other factors. Vinyl, however, costs half of what 100% acrylic resins cost, and polyvinyl acetate (PVA) is even cheaper, so paint companies make many different combinations of them to match the market.
Soon after the water-based acrylic binders were introduced as house paints, artists and companies alike began to explore the potential of the new binders. Water-soluble artists' acrylic paints were sold commercially by Liquitex beginning in the 1950s, with modern high-viscosity paints becoming available in the early '60s. In 1963, Rowney (part of Daler-Rowney since 1983) was the first manufacturer to introduce artist's acrylic paints in Europe, under the brand name "Cryla".