Of course, sometimes you want to make an opaque color more transparent. To do this, add a small amount of your paint to either an acrylic medium or a gel (see Opaque to Transparent, at right). The order is important: Always start with the gel or medium and then add the color. Choose medium for a smoother look and gel for more texture.
As a rule, I keep pastes and titanium white on my palette to increase opacity, and clear mediums and gels to decrease it. Keep in mind that whether you use acrylic paints from the tube or with the addition of a gel or medium, the color will appear lighter when wet; however, I’ve found that when I add Golden’s light molding paste to acrylics, the color stays almost the same from the time it’s applied to its final dry state.
Opaque and transparent painting techniques contribute more to your painting than coverage. Each technique can create a different type of “skin” or tactile appeal. Opaque areas create a thick or sensuous surface, while transparent effects present the illusion of depth. An opaque painting generally appears to come toward the viewer, while a transparent painting recedes, because transparent colors reveal the lower layers, tricking the eye with an illusion of spatial depth. For painting that is mostly opaque, the color and paint film or surface skin are your main foci, so using good quality paints with high pigment loads is important.
Working with opacity and transparency also gives an artist one more way to utilize contrast, which I believe is the most important painting tool. This is why, in almost all of my paintings, I have both opaque and transparent passages.
November 2008 ■ www.artistsmagazine.com
On the left you see yellow ochre acrylic paint in its original form. In the middle, you see the transparency resulting from adding yellow ochre to acrylic medium. For the more textural look on the right, I added yellow ochre to a gloss gel.
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