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Concept

Acrylic paint

Acrylic paint
Assaf Shtilman · Public domain · source

Overview

Acrylic paint is a fast-drying paint made of pigment suspended in acrylic polymer emulsion and plasticizers, silicone oils, defoamers, stabilizers, or metal soaps. Most acrylic paints are water-based, but become water-resistant when dry. Depending on how much the paint is diluted with water, or modified with acrylic gels, mediums, or pastes, the finished acrylic painting can resemble a watercolor, a gouache, or an oil painting, or it may have its own unique characteristics not attainable with other media.

Water-based acrylic paints are used as latex house paints, as latex is the technical term for a suspension of polymer microparticles in water. Interior latex house paints tend to be a combination of binder (sometimes acrylic, vinyl, PVA, and others), filler, pigment, and water. Exterior latex house paints may also be a co-polymer blend, but the best exterior water-based paints are 100% acrylic, because of its elasticity and other factors. Vinyl, however, costs half of what 100% acrylic resins cost, and polyvinyl acetate (PVA) is even cheaper, so paint companies make many different combinations of them to match the market.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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  1. But among all those which we term fusible fluids, there is one that becomes most dense, though formed from the most subtile and equable parts, and is of an uniform character, and partaking of a lustrous yellow colour:—it is that most highly prized possession,—gold, which is produced by filtration through a rock. And a node (ὄζος) of gold, rendered by its density very hard and turned black, is called _adamant_.

    Plato, The works of Plato

    States what Acrylic paint is.

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  2. Of the kinds of earth, that which is filtered through water passes into stone; the water is broken up by the earth and escapes in the form of air—this in turn presses upon the mass of earth, and the earth, compressed into an indissoluble union with the remaining water, becomes rock. Rock, when it is made up of equal particles, is fair and transparent, but the reverse when of unequal.

    Plato, Timaeus

    States what Acrylic paint is.

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  3. Colours are called dioptrical when a colourless medium is necessary to produce them; the medium must be such that light and darkness can act through it either on the eye or on opposite surfaces. It is thus required that the medium should be transparent, or at least capable, to a certain degree, of transmitting light.

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe's Theory of Colours

    States what Acrylic paint is.

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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Aesthetics.

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