Acrylic Mediums

Achieve a wide variety of effects with acrylic paint mediums. Use acrylic mediums to add texture to paint, including crackling, stucco, sand, and glass bead effects. Retarders can be added to acrylic paint to extend the drying time of the paint for increased workability and blending time.

Add an acrylic gel medium to thicken acrylic paint when creating heavy impastos. Gel medium is milky white in the jar, but dries completely transparent. Extenders, flow enhancers, and pouring mediums are great for creating acrylic pour artwork. They improve the fluidity of colors and create either a gloss or matte finish.

Gesso can be applied as a ground to any surface to improve the adhesive qualities of acrylic paint.

Oil Painting Mediums

Add an oil paint medium to your artwork to achieve a wide variety of effects. Alter the texture of the paint, quicken the drying time, increase the paint’s transparency, and more.

Wax Mediums Cold Wax is used to thicken paint to create a buttery texture. It can also be used as a base or topcoat.

Impasto Mediums and Extenders increase the viscosity of the paint and prevent it from cracking, so that the artist can use a thicker application.

Solvents are typically used to thin oil colors and improve flow. They can also be used as a brush cleaner.

Water Mixable Oil Mediums allow you to alter the viscosity and drying time of the water miscible oil paints without the problems traditionally associated with thinning with water. The integrity and luster of the paint is preserved, while still allowing easy cleanup.

Watercolor Mediums

Watercolor mediums change the working characteristics of paint, or of the surface that you are painting on. They can create special visual and textural effects, such as iridescence, granulation, and wax resistance.

Blending medium extends drying time of colors and aids in blending with other colors. Other mediums increase brilliance and transparency, or alter the absorption of the surface. Prepare your surface with a primer or watercolor ground. They’ll enhance and alter the surface for a wide variety of techniques.

Gum arabic, the binder used in traditional watercolors and gouache, is a natural gum derived from the acacia tree of sub-Saharan Africa. It is completely non-toxic as well as edible, and its major use is in the food and cosmetics industries. It serves as an ideal binder for watercolors because it dissolves so easily in water, yet dries to form a thin layer that binds pigment to a paper surface. Add additional gum arabic to watercolors to increase their transparency and gloss, while extending drying time.

Wetting Agents are substances that reduce the surface tension of water. They help watercolor paints to spread and blend more easily, to penetrate the surface of the paper and its sizing. Watercolor paints contain wetting agents to increase working time and prevent them from drying out. Oxgall, extracted from the gall bladders of oxen as a byproduct of meat production, is the traditional wetting agent used by watercolor painters. Modern synthetic wetting agents are also available.