Thank you, Mervi!

From “The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee” by Dorothy Hodges

Aren’t color charts wonderful? I picked this beauty up at a Golden Working Artist paint demo hosted by Creations Arts Space in Boulder. What a great experience! Lots of helpful information plus a generous opportunity to dip into some specialty acrylic painting mediums I’d never tried before. I don’t know about you, but I always feel curious and a little baffled by the choices in the acrylic paint aisle. (Glass Bead Gel anyone?) It was neat to actually get my hands on some of this stuff.

Acrylic and encaustic aren’t compatible. They repel each other. So I won’t be bringing these products into my wax studio anytime soon. But they were fun to play with and I recommend them to acrylic painters who want to add an encaustic-inspired depth to their paintings without investing in the full encaustic experience. The Soft Gel and Regular Gel seem especially suited for this.

My color chart above was hand painted and signed by JR.

UPDATE – Wednesday, February 27th, 12:25 AM

Well… I tried the Soft Gel last week and it’s nothing like encaustic. Nothing at all. Layers appear thinner and are much more plastic-y than encaustic which has a depth and patina all its own. I DO love Golden’s acrylic molding paste. It’s thick and matte. Kind of like plaster with a chalky quality. It doesn’t set right away like encaustic does. Gives you time to operate.