As the name suggest extender makes your acrylics go further. It makes your paint flow onto the canvas with ease without compromising the opacity of the colour like water does and drys with a matt finish. This medium is great for painting large areas or times when you need to be more economical with your paints.
Comparing Acrylic Mediums
Acrylic paint is great, it’s versatile, quick drying, cost effective and brilliant fun to use. It’s popularity continues to grow and grow, but, have you unlocked the full potential of this fantastic and adaptable paint by harnessing the power of acylic mediums?
Water is a well known way to thin down acrylics but mediums open up a whole world of possibilities for artists.
But where to start? What do they do? Extender? Retarder? Structure Gel? Let’s compare a few from Winsor and Newtons Galeria medium range.
Structure Gel
Thought impasto painting was for oil artists buying paint by the barrelful? Think again! Mix a little structure gel with your acrylics to instantly thicken up your paint and replicate heavily applied oils.
Structure Gel has a satin finish to avoid thick layers looking too plastic and when you mix in your base colour there is next to no colour shift too, so it goes a long way. This medium is smooth and flexible to work with and mix, but by no means watery, it holds its shape brilliantly once applied and makes achieving expressive textures straightforward and cost effective. Winsor & Newton produce Structure Gel in two varieties; the standard ‘structure gel’ and for those wanting something even thicker a ‘heavy structure gel’ is available too.
So if your unused pallet knives have been winking at you from the bottom of your art box, structure gel might be to medium for you.
Modelling Paste
Modelling paste is a tough carvable medium which can be used to create bold interesting textures within your artwork that would otherwise be very difficult to achieve using traditional painting techniques.
Colour may be added directly but it is best used neat as a base to be overpainted. Because unlike the structure gel when acrylic paint is added, modelling paste has a tendency to lighten your colour. This is due to the high level of solids in the medium which give it cloudy white appearance.
All these solids certainly make the modelling paste thick but it is still flexible and finely textured enough to be carved, sanded and can even be passed through stencils with ease. The medium has a matt finish and comes in two varieties ‘heavy’ and ‘flexible’ depending on your needs and surface you are working on.
This medium is perfect for those who want to build layers and add structure into their work, the carvable possibilities are endless.
Product Variants
Light grey acrylic paste; dries to a grey, fine-grained coarse film with ideal adhesion properties; mixable with acrylics; suitable for various techniques such as pastel, chalk, watercolors, acrylics and gouache
- Safety Datasheet Pastel Primer
Product Code:
Water-insoluble; white acrylic paste for creating heavy coarse grained; sand-like surface structures; can be applied pure or mixed with acrylic colors.
- Safety Datasheet Modeling Paste Extra Coarse
Product Code:
Water-insoluble; grey beige acrylic paste with a pronounced 3D effect; extremely plastic sculpture/relief effect; dries with a coarsely porous seemingly rough surface structure; can be applied pure or mixed with acrylic colors.
- Safety Datasheet Structure Paste Pumice Mortar
