Opacity and transparency refer to the relative ability of applied paints to hide what’s underneath— in other words, the paint’s covering power. Imagine a portrait of a woman wearing a veil over her face and holding a bright purple flower in her hand. You can see her facial features blurred beneath the veil. The veil is rendered with transparent paint, while the purple flower is painted with opaque paint. The differing degrees of coverage make the painting more attractive and more convincing.
ufacturer’s paint name, however; so if you’re not familiar with a paint color’s opacity, test it by painting a swatch over lines made with permanent black marker (see Opacity Test, on the next page).
over green grass, I would choose a high-coverage color like cadmium red. If I were to use a transparent color, such as quinacridone red, it would merely flavor the green grass with a red tint, which will make my poppies a muddy brown. Understanding covering power is important to controlling color, yet you don’t have to rely on a color’s innate properties. With the help of a few simple techniques, you can customize your paint’s covering power.
There are several options for
Choose and customize You can choose a color for its opaque or transparent property as needed. For example, to paint red poppies
I created the band of brightly colored trees in Bosque del Apache (acrylic, 40x30) with paint-and-molding-paste mixtures, which make the paint bright and opaque. This band contrasts with the transparency of the sky and water, creating a feeling of space.
www.artistsmagazine.com ■ November 2008
Each paint, depending on its pigments, has its own out-of-the-tube covering strength. Pigments fall into two categories: organic and inorganic. In general, the organic pigments tend to have new or modern-sounding names like phthalo and quinacridone. The inorganic pigments have names that sound familiar and natural, like ochre, cadmium and burnt sienna. Inorganic pigments are generally more opaque and have better coverage, while organic pigments tend to be transparent.
You can’t always rely on a man-
■ Nancy Reyner is a freelance artist and a technical consultant for the acrylic paint company Golden Artist Colors.
This article is excerpted from Acrylic Revolution © 2007 by Nancy Reyner. Used with permission of North Light Books, an imprint of F+W Publications Inc. Visit your local bookseller or call 800/448-0915 to obtain a copy.
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