[Steppes] illumination question

[Diane Rudin]

Lady Gabriele wrote:

> Is there any/much difference between WINSOR NEWTON Designers
Gouache and HOLBEIN ACRYLIC GOUACHE? (not shouting, cut and paste from
ebay) 

> Per the Holbein ad it was made by someone who left WN because they thought the company had gotten off track. Thoughts?


Use of acrylic anything is discouraged for our purposes.  

(1) It will not re-constitute; in other words, if it dries out on your palette, all the water in the world won't make it paint again, just a hard lump of now-slightly-sticky ex-paint in a puddle of slightly colored water.  You've just wasted paint.  And if you forget to wash your brushes out immediately, you've just trashed your brushes too.  True gouache is water-soluble.

(2)  It can be tricky to get acrylics to not come out streaky or blobby.  (Same goes for traditional, non-opaque watercolors.)

(3)  Sometimes, it never quite dries, and all of your hard work will end up stuck to the backside of another charter.  Humidity will make it sticky, and Texas is humid.

(4)  It can dry with a sheen that screams "acrylic!" at the top of its lungs.  Period manuscript paints (of which true gouache is the closest modern analogue) dried to a matte finish.

I have no idea what they may be talking about in the Holbein ad, but remember that ads are written to get you to buy product, not to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  I will say that I am not happy that W/N has stopped making a number of the best colors for reproducing period illumination.

--Serenas