Lots of artists believe that acrylic paint, because it is water-based, is non-toxic. The Health Hazard Warning on the jar or tube says there are no known hazardous ingredients. Of course there are some paints that DO contain hazardous heavy metals in them like Cadmium, Cobalt or Chromium. The labels on those jars typically have a Health Warning that the materials can cause cancer.

I love these Marabu Art Crayons! Some friends told me about them many months ago, and I am just getting around to trying them. I have been looking for a material that has great color, is permanent, and does not need to be sealed or varnished, and I finally found what I was looking for.

These two pieces are painted with acrylic paint on (2) 12x36” gallery wrapped canvases. I used the following GOLDEN Heavy Body Acrylic colors:

In this video I am painting on a 24x48 canvas with GOLDEN Heavy Body Acrylic Paint. The spray bottle you see me using is filled with water, which helps the paint to spread better across the surface. The canvas was coated with a thick layer of gesso and allowed to dry before the painting was done. The thick gesso adds a nice textural quality to the surface of the canvas.

I received a question recently from a long time reader/watcher Gaston, who asked if I would demonstrate how I pack art on paper for shipping. Thanks for the suggestion Gaston! I have talked before about packing canvases for shipping, but never about art on paper.

This video is a follow up to one I did about 2 years ago. The reason for the follow up is that I have received numerous questions about how to approach businesses (that aren’t art related businesses) to display work. (The link for the original video can be found below).

In this painting I was trying to play colors of the same or similar values off of each other rather than creating lots of value contrast. The large shapes of red-orange and blue-green are about the same value, but they are distinguished by the color differences (color contrasts), rather than value contrasts.

For this post and video, I am doing something just a bit different. Typically when painting on watercolor paper, as I am in this video, the paper is coated with gesso first. I do this to seal the paper and to make the paper surface essentially the same as the canvas surface.

This post was prompted by a student who asked a question about issuing refunds for purchased artwork. Someone had purchased a painting from them, and for whatever reason wanted to return it for a refund. Every artist will probably have a different way to handle this situation.