Expanding your Knowhow of Transparent Paints
If you’ve been painting for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed that some paints are listed as Transparent or Opaque, which is indicative of the opacity of the paint. More on the differences between the opacity of paints in our other blog article: “Opaque, Transparent and Translucent: The Importance of Opacity in Paint”. For the purposes of this article, we will be focusing on the way you can expand your knowledge base even more about transparent paints.
Testing the limits of your Transparent Paints
A good test to make for your future reference is the pigment strength and opacity of your transparent paints. The easiest way to do this is to lay down a swipe of opaque black paint and a swipe of a medium neutral gray on one side of a white canvas. Then, once completely dry, swatch your transparent paints over both the black, gray, and white parts of the surface to see how strong the pigment is on each of these. Pictured below:
The paints used (in order):
115 D Phthalo Blue Deep
181 Quinacridone Violet
116 Phthalo Green
129 Quinacridone Red
106 Indian Yellow
178 Arylide Yellow PY 194
This is great for knowing your pigments, what they can provide coverage for and how the pigment performs. Above you can see that the 178 Arylide Yellow PY 194 has a better pigment strength (based on the way it reflects on top of the black and gray paint) than the 106 Indian Yellow even though the latter is darker in hue. So, you can conclude that while 106 is likely better for washes and glazes, the 178 would be better for mixing as the color will persist despite the lightness of it.
Adding More Transparency
If you find the pigment is still a bit strong (for glazing a lighter area of a painting for example) you can make it even more transparent with the use of an acrylic medium. Our recommended choice is #235 Novaplex as it is designed to make your acrylics more fluid, but it also makes them more transparent if enough is used and the paint is already transparent. Other good options include the #204 Matte Medium and the #206 Gloss Medium Varnish.
Mixing Effectively While our article “Opaque, Transparent and Translucent: The Importance of Opacity in Paint” goes over mixing proportional amounts of transparent paints together based on the darkness/lightness of the pigment but how does that knowledge translate into painting?
Basically, you can test the limits of each transparent pigment combo with varying proportions to learn how to shift your colors more effectively when painting. For example, if we take 116 Phthalo Green and 178 Arylide Yellow PY194 and mix them in different ratios we can see just how far the light and darkness of these two paints can be pushed. Similar to if you wanted to see the tints, tones, and shades of each pigment but keep the chromatic effects of each paint.
Pictured below will give you an idea of what this can look like:
Not only does this give you a range of colors to mix, but also to use as a glaze to slowly build up color and depth with each layer.