This is a detailed review by the artist Michael Carini about his love for and use of Nova Color acrylic paints. In this review, Michael will share how he discovered Nova Color, how he uses the paints, and why Nova Color is always his preferred choice of acrylic paints.
Let's get started!
———
I often get asked what my favorite brand of paint is, and I absolutely love and could not more highly recommend Nova Color Professional Acrylic Artist Paints.
I have been using them since around 2004 when I was introduced to them because I was a student at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles and Nova Color is a factory-direct out of Los Angeles. So I was able to look at the facility where they make the paint and see all the behind the scenes — all that how it goes into making paint and it's a cool thing to witness and I strongly recommend it for anybody that has an opportunity to do so.
Now I know that a lot of you out there are probably familiar with brands like Liquitex and Golden and they're absolutely fantastic brands but I can say for certain that Nova Color is definitely a comparable brand.
The thing that I love about Nova Color is that I am the type of guy that if I go to a restaurant like cheesecake factory and there are a million things on the menu I will be completely overwhelmed and just randomly pick one thing. Nova Color is not overwhelming in their selection and I think that that's a great thing with paint is they have enough variety for you to be able to get a full spectrum of colors but it is not to the point that it is overwhelming.
I like to buy my primaries and mix a lot of my secondaries and tertiaries and then, of course, I use a lot of my whites and for tinting you got your blacks for shades and then you got your specialty colors your fluorescence things of that nature.
Now yes there are absolutely some colors that I will buy, some secondary colors and some tertiary colors, just because hey they're hard to mix and that's a badass color and sometimes I just get excited and want a new color.
But Nova Color is a fantastic brand and they have a variety of mediums Gessos that you can use as well. The other cool thing about Nova Color is because they're factory direct I find that they're very cost-effective in relation to a lot of other brands.
So, for example, you could get a little four-ounce tube or tub of color or you can bump up to a 16 or you could bump up to a 32. Now what happens with Nova Color is as you bump up to a larger size you save a lot of money. So if you get a 32 ounce it's generally much more cost-effective per ounce than a 16 or a four so if you know that you're going to use a lot of color you get it in a large size like in a pourable gallon size of titanium white.
Paint Purchased after Viewing this Post
The other cool thing about Nova Color is that they list on all of their colors what the light fastness is on a scale of one to three, with three being the lowest meaning that this is actually a lower grade of lightfastness than the majority of the colors that you will use. And that's the case of fluorescence and that means that they are not necessarily archival, they're gonna be more susceptible to UV damage and fading over time. Whereas a level one lightfastness means that that's a color that's gonna last for much longer and be much more archival in its properties.
So say you're doing outdoor murals there are definitely colors that you're going to want to work with over other colors with level one light fastness colors and even within the level one there are colors that are known to have better coverage and to just last longer.
All the colors listed on the Nova Color website display whether they are opaque, translucent, or transparent. Opaque meaning that it will be a full-coverage color so that's going to be like your whites. They will cover over just about anything so fewer coats and greater coverage in terms of not being able to see what's underneath. Translucent means a little bit of light's going to pass through and transparent meaning that a lot of light is going to pass through and those are generally colors that are great for glazing and cool techniques.
They have a variety of mediums as well — one of the mediums that I absolutely love from them is called their Novaplex. I find that to be a great and comparable medium to a pouring medium something like a liquid exploring medium or the phloetrol medium by home depot that a lot of people use for the poor painting techniques.
But I love the Novaplex of the different mediums that I've tried. I actually like the novoplex the best for that purpose so if you have not tried out Nova Color, I strongly recommend that you do. You can check them out at novacolorpaint.com. I live by them and I have built my legacy my castle on these so I trust them to guard me and build my legacy so try novacolorpaint.com now.