Acrylic Question

Acrylics are not my favorite medium and I normally avoid them. However, I've been trying to paint in various media lately and started an acrylic that's going surprisingly well - it's usually something of a fight for me.

Anyway, I'm painting flowers and using Golden brand Quinacridone Violet but I'm having problems getting nice highlights. If I lighten with white, I get a pinkish color which just looks chalky. If I lighten with yellow, it's still not right. Orange doesn't get it light enough and someone suggested a light blue which I haven't tried yet but would think that would be too dark also.

How do you lighten some colors in acrylics and have them look ok?

I always had the same problem because of the transparency, even when a color is labeled as opaque. What I ended up doing was painting highlights with small highlight strokes of titanium white and then going over it with a glaze of the color I wanted for the highlight. I had to play around with it a bit to get the right value of highlight, but it did take care of the problem and did not change the color, such as red to a chalky pink. I've used this same technique for WS Oils.
Judy

Thanks so much Judy. I did try that but got a bit of streakiness and it wasn't quite light enough but I think that's the right approach as that looked the best of anything I tried. I just didn't think to play with it to get it right.

Thanks again - acrylics may never be my favorite medium!

You're welcome. As I played with it, I found that feathering the white out a bit around the edges and stroking to follow the curve (ie, and apple) helped.

Judy

Do you have any video tutorial for painting flowers in acrylics

I don't have any - as I've said, acrylics really aren't my medium of first choice. Did you look on YouTube?