Paint Additives & Mediums Explained

Good paint additives (or mediums) are the unsung heroes for the artist.

They're often an afterthought once you've bought the brushes, paints & paper or art canvas, but knowing which ones to use and when, can help you turn the average picture into a minor masterpiece.

However, choose the wrong ones or use them unwisely and a promising painting can be transformed into a sticky, unexpected gift for the trash can.

But just what are paint additives & mediums? It's one of those terms that can mean a lot of different things to different people.

First, let's get one bit of confusion out of the way...

Artists often refer to 'paint mediums' or 'a painting medium' as the type of paint or drawing materials you're using, i.e. oil paints, watercolor, pastels, watercolor paints or acrylic paints, etc.

However 'paint mediums' is also a term freely used when describing an additive to paint to change its properties in some way.

In the context of this article paint mediums mean an additive to your paints that can quietly and effectively achieve one or more of several things.

Hence the unsung hero analogy...

So from now on in this article, I'll just use the term 'paint additives' to hopefully avoid confusion.

Un-glamorous, but as essential as the oil in the engine of your car. Mixed with the paint, paint additives can make it:

• Thicker or thinner,

• More or less transparent,

• Duller or shinier,

• More textured or smoother,

• Dry quicker or slower, and so on.

Used on your painting surface before you start, paint additives make things easier for you in several ways. For example...

• Easier to get paint to lift off, or to adhere,

• Easier to move paint around or to blend,

• Able to make the surface smoother or more textured,

• Make it more or less absorbent.

And when you've finished your painting and want to protect and preserve it for years to come, they can:-

• Cover and protect, for a short period or for much longer,

• Be a permanent, immovable varnish or one that can be lifted off if it discolors.

• Help clean the paint residue from your brushes and equipment

Now whereas most art brushes can, broadly speaking, be used across all the main paint types of acrylics, oils and water colors etc... most paint additives are not as interchangeable, or if they are, only in one direction, so to speak.

By that I mean, for example, a spirit-based varnish for oil paints can also be used to varnish a completed acrylic painting.

However, 'from the other direction', a water-based acrylic-polymer varnish won't adhere to an oil painting.

The number of paint additives are many and varied and manufacturers are bringing out new formulations all the time.

What I've done is to break these down into three separate articles - acrylic mediums, oil mediums and water color mediums which you can find by clicking on the appropriate link.

Have a look also at this link on art brushes care because some of the mediums can affect the brushes' long term well-being as much as if you leave dried paint on them.

Click here for the Acrylic Mediums article

Click here for the Oil Paint Mediums article

Click here for the Water Color Mediums article

Don't panic at all the paint mediums listed. Most of them won't be needed until you become more experienced and even then, quite probably you won't bother with them all.

If you look closely at many of them, they have similar properties and you can often achieve two or three things with the one paint medium.

As ever, enjoy your painting!

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