Best 11 Brands of Acrylic Paint

W&N launched this range of acrylics in January 2009 to replace their Finity series. It is indeed a different product, having a longer working time (up to half an hour), minimal shift from wet to dry (because of a new binder), and a satin finish (rather than gloss). The tube labels have a painted color swatch rather than a printed one. 10 Finity colors have been discontinued and 17 new colors introduced.

I've found the longer working time removes the rush to blend colors before they dry, but isn't so long I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for paint to dry (except on small-size paintings). The colors are rich, intense, and saturated, with a soft butter consistency that holds brushmarks. (I used them to paint my Expressive Apple Worksheet.)

My long-term favorite brand of acrylic paint is Golden's Heavy Body acrylics. Golden is an American company created specifically to produce top-quality acrylic paints for artists. I love the range of vibrant colors, which includes an extremely useful set of neutral grays. The paint consistency is like smooth, soft butter, and it thins down for glazes easily, and dries rapidly. For serious impasto, you'll most likely want to add some medium (Golden produces a range of options, including gels and molding pastes Buy Direct).

Golden also produce fluid acrylics (Buy Direct), a heavy body matte acrylic (Buy Direct), and a slow-drying acrylic called Open (Buy Direct).

Launched in mid-2008, Golden's Open Acrylics have an extended drying time, making them more comparable to oil paints rather than 'traditional' acrylic paints. Open Acrylics stay workable on a normal palette for hours rather than minutes, eliminating the need for a moisture-retaining palette. Open Acrylics provide the ease of using water as a medium (and for cleaning brushes) with a long working and blending time. The color range isn't as extensive as for Golden's Heavy Duty acrylics, but the fundamentals are included.

I like Liquitex's Heavy Body Professional Artist Colors for the paint's consistency (quite buttery and 'sticky', so great for using with a knife) and because they come in 'plastic' tubes which are incredibly robust. (To be technically accurate, Liquitex comes in Glaminate, tubes made from laminated layers of plastic, metal, and paper.)

If you wanted an acrylic paint with a long working time, them M. Graham & Co's would be top of your list (working in a hot, dry climate, they give me about half an hour). But as I'm an impatient painter and I work mostly in glazes which I want to dry quickly, I don't need to extra working time very often. The colors are sumptuous -- very strong and saturated -- and blend together beautifully. If you were used to working in oils and wanted to swap to acrylics, this would be the brand to try.

Matisse structure paint is a 'normal' acrylic paint that does what you'd expect from a decent artist's quality acrylic. Probably the only unexpected thing about it is that it's made in Australia and has some unique color names (such as Southern Ocean Blue, or Australia Sky Blue). It has a soft, buttery consistency that will hold brushmarks if used undiluted, straight from the tube. It can be diluted with water and/or medium for painting without leaving brushmarks, for glazing, or for watercolor-type techniques. To increase the impasto effect, you'd mix it with impasto or texture medium.

The 'big deal' about these acrylic paints is that, according to the manufacturer, they "dry differently", that they don't form a skin as they dry so you can rehydrate them to keep working wet-in-wet by spraying some water on the paint or using a wet brush. I found I could indeed work back into the paint with a wet brush, which makes blending colors less of an urgency and easier. If you do a lot of blending of colors rather than glazing, consider this brand of acrylic.

This is an American brand of paint which seems to be distributed only in the US. I first bought various tubes from a Utrecht store in New York because the price was competitive with more familiar brands. The paint is thickly buttery but spreads easily when diluted. The colors are what you'd expect from an artist's grade paint: saturated, with good tinting or covering strength depending on what color it is. While I wouldn't make a special trip to get hold of it, if it's one of the options at your local store, it's worth considering.

While I'm a great believer in using quality artist's paints sometimes it's too inhibiting because you're worrying about wasting the paint. Then it's better to use a good student's quality paint that enables you to feel free to experiment, to just see what happens if you do something, to scrape off paint and paint over something. Winsor & Newton's Galeria brand is an affordable or student's grade of paint that has good strength in colors and works easily (though you'll have to add texture paste if you want thick paint as it's quite soft paint). And it doesn't put too huge a dent in your pocket.

There are a number of other brands of acrylic paint on the market, for example: Lascaux, Grumbacher, Schmincke, Utrecht, Brera (Maimeri). Of these I've used only a few tubes of Brera (Buy Direct). My suggestion would be to check on the tube to see what pigments the paint is made from, whether it's been graded as lightfast, and buy a tube in a color you use regularly to see how it compares to what you usually use. (See Assessing a New Brand of Acrylic or Oil Paint for more tips.)