Paints

If you pop by thus blog from time to time you might know I'm a bit of a fan of Fresco Finish paint by Paperartsy.

They have a lot of pigment and seem to go a long way. That said I tend not to use them for mono printing, instead I usually use a heavy body acrylic from Daler Rowney or similar ( I find for the effect I want the dark colours work best - navy, black, dark red/maroon, dark green - and often achieve the dark tone by mixing in a bit of black.) 

The Fresco Finish paints come into their own for hand colouring and they can also be watered down and used in a spray bottle. 

But they are brilliant for brayering onto backgrounds to build up layers of colour. And they dry really quickly making this a really speedy process. 

What I love about these paints is that they have different opacity - layering the colours can have a wonderful effect - the translucent paints won't obliterate the paint underneath but instead will blend over it. 

Paperartsy do little instruction videos - I have shared a few before - but they've just produced this one to show the new paint ranges for 2016. 

If, like me, you are not so hot on colour theory you might find this very useful. What I love is the way the paints are grouped into families. It gives a real insight into cool and warmer colours etc. 

I'm not going to explain it here - instead have a little look at this video. 

By the way, I think I'm going to give their new retarder a go. You may recall mine was a mare to use last time. I think I should invest in some more and perhaps try a different brand - though I will ask them first if they think their retarder will work with a heavy body paint. 

Anyway, I hope that like me, you find this video useful.