Painting is like magic to me. You touch the paper with colors and an image appears! A realist will tell you it’s not magic at all but a science of understanding colors and textures. I’d rather look at painting as magic!
Brenda Grounds McCart

Trying out liquid acrylic paint (Photo by iHanna - Hanna Andersson)

A while back I splurged on some new to me paints, Golden and Twinkling h2o, and today I thought I’d write a bit about them. I found one new favorite and a few disappointments. The favorite is the Golden fluid Acrylics, fluid/liquid being what separates it most from what I usually use in other cheaper brands. And the price of course. Golden is expensive, and in Sweden I think it is super expensive if you happen to find it. The little bottle I got is 119 ml (4 oz) and it costs 190 Swedish crowns (24 dollars). If I would get one of each colour you can calculate yourself how much that would be.

Trying out liquid acrylic paint (Photo by iHanna - Hanna Andersson)
But to paint with fluid acrylics was a joy, a real joy. It is very rich and it seams that a little will go a long way, especially if you add water. It has a beautiful transparency to it too. My colour choice was a beautiful rich Quinacridone Magenta. I think it is very nice to paint with and I’m glad I now know what everyone is talking about when mentioning liquid acrylics.

Twinkling h2o
Twinkling paints (Photo by iHanna - Hanna Andersson)

I also bought some pretty ribbons and a pack of watercolours from a scrapbook store. I have read raving things about the paints, so I really wanted to try them when I found them here in Sweden. They are called Twinkling H2O (from LuminArte’) and comes in pretty miniature jars and has pretty names (pink is called Cherry Sorbet) that makes me want to eat them…

But to paint with them? No thanks! Sorry, but not my cup of tea.

Twinkling h2o

Twinkling h2o

First you have to add a lot of water to soften them, then wait because they are really hard. Then when you paint you do get a beautiful shimmer effect, but is almost invisible to the eye and some of the colors are not much of “colour”. My sample is painted on gesso in my altered book, and the photo is taken with a flash which makes them shinier than they look in real life:

Twinkling h2o (Photo by iHanna - Hanna Andersson)

The green, called Olive vine, was boldest, but the others were almost invisible to me. As a light colour hint I think they would work fine, but I guess I was expecting something more from these paints… like colours…

Trying h2o on other colours
Here I tried the H2O on acrylic painted surfaces, and the shimmer comes through but it wouldn’t matter in which jar I picked that shimmer, because again; the colour is invisible. I just wanted to share my experience, you might be of a different view and are welcome to let me know what you think about both Golden fluids vs. other brands, and H2O shimmer effects below!

I give Fluid acrylics two tumbs up! The h2o kit will not be used much around here; they are boring to use because of the hard cakes. Maybe I’ll try them on fabric, that might be fun.

Twinkling h2o white paint (Photo by iHanna - Hanna Andersson)
Oh, buy the way: the Siam white paint is not twinkling, but rather good as a covering white if you don’t have one in your water colour box (I don’t).