REVIEW: Liquitex Heavy Body Paint Set

I’ve been looking for an acrylic that acts like oils. I seem to have a reaction to the oils so I have been looking at brands, mediums, variations of acrylic that I can substitute it with. This is a review of the Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic paints. I chose these because the regular acrylics I have used seems to be thin, more suited to glazing. The transparency is not something I particularly like. My favourite medium is gouache but its not something I like to use on canvas, its not something I trust to be particularly lightfast. Also the brands on offer are limited compared to acrylic. But Gouache can be watery, it can be thick, it can be transparent and it can be opaque. No acrylic I have used has yet met all these criteria.

I got a set of 12x 60ml at Cassart for £20. Bargain, professional paint for a student price. They are well worth this price. No matter the negatives I discuss, its heavily pigmented paint that seems at times to paint itself. It is creamy in texture and glides on beautifully. However when I add water it seems like there is a significant dilution of the colour. Black plus water, usually means watery black but in these paints it seems to create a grey. This means that colours can very easily become muddy. It also makes blending a bit of an issue depending on your technique. I have a habit of using water to blend edges out. Now a classical oil painter doesn’t do this, they graduate the paint out until it blends seamlessly and smoothly. This paint is good for that however there is still the drying time to consider. I do think it would be worth playing with and adapting style to accommodate these paints. Or perhaps mix them with a soft body paint to loosen them up without getting them as loose as the soft body itself. Considering what I said above you’ll notice that this doesn’t really apply to non-realist art. Abstraction, impasto, expressionism. These are just for you.

Of my own art I did a portrait shown on my website with these paints. This was the very first time I had used these paints and I think you can see that the blending was problematic in it, however blending is often problematic in acrylic regardless. What was very successful was the hair. The depth and richness of the colour made the brown hair shiny rather than listless and muddy. I intend to persevere with this paints, trying different styles. I feel like the paint is better than I am currently using it and at that price point, for the bold colours it has I believe it is worth experimentation.