Acrylic Paint… My Dirty Little Secret

Paint, I love you so I have bins and boxes of you but I need to spill the beans to my readers on what type of paint I like best. I have made my own (oils), used and have every type of paint imaginable but for some reason I am addicted to “cheap” acrylic craft paint. You know the kind you get at the craft store or Wal-mart for $0.97 or sometimes 2 for a $1.00. Folk Art, Plaid, Dream Coat, Apple Barrel, I love you all. I love Golden paints but I thin them down to a liquid form. I am not denying the quality of them I really like them but I love my thin liquid paints. I don’t know why I love the cheap craft paint, maybe it is because I grew up using it and I am most comfortable with it. See when I paint I don’t set out to paint the next Masterpiece, so why use expensive paint on something that may not turn out? I also hate transparent paint. I find that expensive acrylic lends to be more transparent then I like or it is glossier than I like. I know there are things that I can add so it is not like that but why when all I need to do is open my little bottle and it is done for me. Even when I was in school and I had to buy the expensive paint, I would only use it in class and then when I worked on it at home I would pull out my “cheap” paints.
I had a professor at SCAD who lectured my class about how important it was to use a good quality paint. He stated, how it was unacceptable to use anything but Golden Paints on his projects because all other paint are crap. Someone inquired about the craft paints you buy at Wal-mart and he said if anyone used those paints he would know and he would fail us. He was full of crap! I would bring the good paints to class but when I got home I would sit and paint with my cheap paint on Styrofoam plates. Every project I did for his class was painted with cheap acrylic paint and I got an A in the class (I was the only person who got an A in his class). It is not the quality of the paint, it is the talent of the artist and how they use it. I don’t want to sound conceded in saying this but it is true. I take cheap acrylic paint and paint what I think are nice paintings. I have seen wonderful paintings done with good acrylics and I have seen bad paintings done with them also. I can guarantee if I never spilled the beans no one would ever know I use cheap acrylic paint in all of my paintings. I do use Golden Paynes Gray instead of black because I haven’t found a “cheap” version of it, otherwise everything else is Cheap acrylic paint.

So there you have it my dirty little secret – I paint with cheap craft paint. Here are the photos to prove it.