Does anybody use Acryla Gouache?

Electric Cat Dude

Needle-chuck Ninja
I’m kind of turned off by pre-formulated acrylic airbrush paint, principally because it tends to cause needle to build up and tends to dry to a more plasticky finish when you build up large layers of it. In the past I have used watercolors and gouache from tubes, but these colors do you have limitations. Chief among them is that they tend to dry to a different color than they are when wet, and gouache is very fragile when applied and heavy layers. I have however had an interest in trying Holbein’s line of Acryla Gouache. I’m wondering if it will solve a lot of the tip drive problems, while still allowing for smooth color build up in heavy layers without a plasticky finish. Does anybody have any experience with this product?
 
I have not used those specific paints. I do have a set of Liquitex Acrylic Gouache, though. I like the stuff. I have used it both heavily reduced, and straight from the bottle (it is a fairly heavy bodied liquid). That said - In the end it is an acrylic base, so you wind up fighting many of the same issues... have you tried E'tac Efx? For me, it has the least tip dry out of any airbrush specific paint I have tried.
liquitex gouache.jpg
 
I haven’t tried them, so can’t help there. But in my limited understanding, I think it is the acrylic part that causes a lot of the issues we have. I’m sure the resins would have an effect too, but I see so many people using different water based paints all looking for the same answer to more or less degrees.


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I went out and purchased a pack of Holbein Acryla Gouache consisting of the 5 primary colors (CMYK + W) to use as a test from a local Dick Blick store to test them. Out of sheer curiosity I thinned a test sample of the Magenta using 100% Windsor & Newton flow improver as opposed to sterile water and ran it through my Iwata CM-B airbrush. I must say I was pleasantly shocked by the results. GREATLY reduced tip buildup and REALLY DEPENDABLE fine line performance, almost to the point of the airbrush handling like a pencil. This really maximizes the performance capability of an airbrush like an Iwata Custom Micron or other high-end airbrushes. Holbein is already phenomenal in terms of the quality of their pigments and it really shows up compared to other “airbrush ready” paints like Createx, ComArt, etc. I also compared this to Holbein’s acrylic inks and found the Acryla gouache to be vastly superior, at least in terms of fine line performance, tip buildup and dependability. Another really good feature of this Acryla Gouache is it is very stable compared to traditional gouaches, especially when applied heavily, but still is easily workable using negative techniques like erasers, etc.

All in all, I think that I will be switching over to Holbein Acryla Gouache, at least when painting fine art and illustrations.
 
I went out and purchased a pack of Holbein Acryla Gouache consisting of the 5 primary colors (CMYK + W) to use as a test from a local reproductive organ Blick store to test them. Out of sheer curiosity I thinned a test sample of the Magenta using 100% Windsor & Newton flow improver as opposed to sterile water and ran it through my Iwata CM-B airbrush. I must say I was pleasantly shocked by the results. GREATLY reduced tip buildup and REALLY DEPENDABLE fine line performance, almost to the point of the airbrush handling like a pencil. This really maximizes the performance capability of an airbrush like an Iwata Custom Micron or other high-end airbrushes. Holbein is already phenomenal in terms of the quality of their pigments and it really shows up compared to other “airbrush ready” paints like Createx, ComArt, etc. I also compared this to Holbein’s acrylic inks and found the Acryla gouache to be vastly superior, at least in terms of fine line performance, tip buildup and dependability. Another really good feature of this Acryla Gouache is it is very stable compared to traditional gouaches, especially when applied heavily, but still is easily workable using negative techniques like erasers, etc.

All in all, I think that I will be switching over to Holbein Acryla Gouache, at least when painting fine art and illustrations.
Very interesting results. I know nothing about this kind of paint. Do you know if they’re classed as lightfast pigments?
 
Out of curiosity what about the recommended instructions provided "Winsor & Newton Artists' Acrylic. Flow Improver should be diluted in water to a ratio of 1:20." ?

I use a lot of Golden Flow improver (I think it is called wetting agent now). It has the same recommendation as the Windsor, dilute with water - I noticed that it hurts the paints ability to fully cure if used in excess, or without dilution.
 
Out of curiosity what about the recommended instructions provided "Winsor & Newton Artists' Acrylic. Flow Improver should be diluted in water to a ratio of 1:20." ?

I use a lot of Golden Flow improver (I think it is called wetting agent now). It has the same recommendation as the Windsor, dilute with water - I noticed that it hurts the paints ability to fully cure if used in excess, or without dilution.

I will certainly try additional experiments with the correct dilution, Dave.
 
Very interesting results. I know nothing about this kind of paint. Do you know if they’re classed as lightfast pigments?

Yes it does use lightfast pigment as opposed to other mediums (Dr PH Martin’s Radiant Watercolors, etc.).

Gouache is a kind of opaque watercolor and had, for decades, been the go-to paint for airbrush illustrators before the advent of airbrush ready acrylic colors. Traditional gouache uses a gum Arabic binder, which has a couple of downsides. First, it often dried to a different color than what it was when wet. Secondly it was quite fragile and could often lift off and flake off from the substrate if applied in heavy layers. Holbein solved a lot of these problems by using an acrylic resin in place of the gum Arabic binder. I was very curious for quite a while as to how Acryla Gouache would perform with airbrushing. I had used traditional watercolors and gouache in airbrushes before and they work very well.

Speaking of that, one of the downsides to this acrylic wash is that it’s only available in tube form and must be diluted and prepped prior to use in an airbrush. But that’s as easy as using an eye dropper and an old nylon brush to mix in water on a pallet, then load it into the gun using either an eye dropper or a nylon round brush.
 
Speaking of it, I think this site’s automatic censoring system is hysterical! I note in my original post that the store I bought the squash from is called “reproductive organ Blick”. Maybe I’m old, and yes I know that they currently market themselves as Blick Artists Materials, they still use the dickblick.com web address from what they were originally known as!
 
Speaking of it, I think this site’s automatic censoring system is hysterical! I note in my original post that the store I bought the squash from is called “reproductive organ Blick”. Maybe I’m old, and yes I know that they currently market themselves as Blick Artists Materials, they still use the dickblick.com web address from what they were originally known as!
The auto censor often makes me laugh too.
Dick Blick is one of the good ones.


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Thanks to Kim Mcann’s suggestion on needle polishing i Ave virtually eliminated tip buildup and can concentrate on technique.

my first piece with acrylic gouache

2-E963-A9-F-86-AE-475-A-B58-D-A405-FB224086.jpg
 
Another item: has anybody used a few drops of Ox gall in paints. I’m experiment name of the stuff and it seems to virtually eliminate inconsistency with doing very fine lines. I’m conducting some Frisket tests right now to verify that it does not affect the binding ability of the paints to the subtrate. So far it seems to be an excellent performer, far better than the acrylic flow improver that I was using before.
 
This is another product I had never heard of. I’m interested to see the results of your testing. Thanks for sharing with us.


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Speaking of it, I think this site’s automatic censoring system is hysterical! I note in my original post that the store I bought the squash from is called “reproductive organ Blick”. Maybe I’m old, and yes I know that they currently market themselves as Blick Artists Materials, they still use the dickblick.com web address from what they were originally known as!

I had no idea there was an auto profanity detection and corection going on at all.
I thought it was some kind of "in joke" o_O
:laugh::laugh::laugh:
Just add to the crap I don't know
 
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