What can I add to acrylic paints to slow drying time?

I have used acrylic paints when creating party games, and scenes for children's parties, and fairs. I like the fast drying action.

Have you asked your neighborhood art supply store if they have an acrylic paint drying retardant?

I was under the impression it took years for acrylics to truely dry!
And they arnt known for their blenability.
But yeah, maybe there is some sort of oul mixer that can be added for flexibility.

The acrylics we are talking about are water color paints. At least the ones I have used, and they have the look of oil paint when you finish the painting. I don't know what your talking about MG.

I like working with acrylics too, but the fast drying does make it hard to get them blended just right sometimes. Your local art store should carry drying retardants. They come in different finishes (matte, glossy, etc.) you just mix them in with the paint on your pallette.

Also, Material girl, it is oil paints that can take years to dry. My grandmother has an oil painting she bought years ago and it is still smudgeable-as all the younger grandkids have proven.

thanks everyone for the replies. It probably seems obvious-- duh, look in the art supply store! But when I bought my paints I looked all over and didn;t see anything that said it was anything like that. I'll keep looking!

I have worked fairly extensively with acrylic, both in college and out. What i've found works best is plain old water. I keep a spray bottle beside my work table at all times, (not a cheap bottle mind, one that is capable of a very fine mist with no spattering) and whenever the area i'm working on shows signs of drying, I just give it a squirt. Acryllic is marvelously water-soluable, and just a slight mist can keep it wet for a nice long time.

A few problems to note with this method:

1) Even though the paint will remain wet longer, you will still have to paint furiously to get anything comparable to the blending that oil provides.

2) Overspraying an area will cause rather unfortunate results. Best to test the method several times on a painting of little or no consequence before attempting it on one you plan to keep.

Cheers!

cool idea, questioner! I'll definitely try it!

some some good old fashioned turpintine.

Turpentine is for oils. I usually use oil paints. Turpentine, and linseed oil.

Try mixing them.

I always use Turpentine, and linseed oil with no problems, for oil paints. I use Liquitex brand.

I don't use turpentine even with oil paints. There are newer much less toxic solvents - Gamblin's Gamsol, for example.

I haven't painted with acrylics for years, but understand there are diluents with drying retardants in them. I'll see what I can find online and be back.

There are also water soluble oil paints, which seems impossible but they work. I hear they work best for certain kinds of painters; they've been suggested to me by a college studio art teacher who came into our gallery and liked my work, said this is just the kind of painting that works best with the water soluble oils - I work in a lot of glazes.
Holbein is a company that makes those paints, as I remember.

As an aside to the topic, there is also a fabulous product called Turpinol which is as effective as turpentine, but quite a bit less toxic and foul smelling.

It also won't eat the skin from your fingers.

I use various blending media made by Sennelier for watercolor. Then I always use the fine water spray to keep the colr spreadable. In water color we live for those "unfortunate accidents"
There are lots of slo-dry and gel media made by the acrylics companies. Remember acrylics are just a plastic based watercolor with a ketone in to allow them to be painted wet. So, Ive always thought a ketone would make them spreadable once theyve dried. I dont know. I dont like acrylics cause the colors are too flat looking and Ive never seen an acrylic painting that Ive really liked.
In folk art, where that pasty look can be worked over with "tea colored" washes of inks , in order to simulate age, then acrylics are good. Just not for my own "flat art"

Yeah, now that I've got them I'm really not sure I like them either. I have seen paintings by a local artist that I really liked and they were listed as acrylics. To me it looked like you could get the effect of oils without dealing with all the nasty stuff like turpentine...but now I've heard from a friend that they can't be similar to oils at all, no matter what you add to them. Grr. The books I looked at also claimed you could get similar results as you get with oils. I'm annoyed I bought them! I should have just looked into the new things available to make working with oils easier that have come along since the last time I worked with them. Ah well... perhaps I can get used to them, I haven't had time to play with them much.

Spraying water and using retardants (but not too much) are both effective in working with acrylics. I like the speed with which acrylics dry. That permits me to paint in layers which produces effects not easily attainable with oils. And one can stain raw canvases effectively with acrylics. But I do want to use oils someday, WITH TURPINOL (thanks Questioner), especially OVER acrylics. One can't do the reverse. You can apply oils over dried acrylic, but the reverse--something about mixing oil and water.

thanks JL. sounds like you like working with acrylics. As soon as I have some time I'm going to try playing with them some more.

Try Utrechts on-line. I have used the gels for acrylics and it does slow down the drying time.

Sglass

On turpentine products, some comments here -
http://www.gamblincolors.com/safety.html (they use a synthetic resin instead) Not to push Gamblin, just that they ballyhoo safety.

As you can add drying retardants to acrylic medium you can add drying helpers to oil mediums. I've never tried that as I work fairly thin and things dry fast enough for me.