Rethinking Acrylic

Book excerpt: Have you ever walked into an art supply store, stood in front of the amazing array of acrylic products and just thrown up your hands in confusion, leaving the store without buying something new to experiment with? If you've ever wondered what to do with all those products, then this book is for you. If you've been using acrylic in traditional painting forms, in this book you'll find grand, wild and inventive manipulations of acrylic that will get your creative juices flowing. Compared to more traditional art mediums such as oil and watercolor, acrylic is still in its infancy. But what it lacks in years, it makes up for in its range of use. Acrylics appeared on the market for artists in the late 1940s as a quick-drying alternative to oil paint. In its early manifestations, it dried so quickly that more than a few brushes stuck immediately to the canvas! Although acrylic has been around for more than fifty years, incredible advances continue to be made in the research and development of acrylic polymers and pigments. These advancements are attributable not only to the efforts of a few dedicated chemists, but also to the work of an entire community devoted to acrylic. There are a lot of brilliant minds taking these minute molecules very seriously.