Painting on fabric: how to enhance your painting with medium acrylic fabric and medium gel

If you’re just starting to paint fabric, you may not have heard of these two helpful aids that experienced artists rely on to make painting easier and create better-looking painted pieces. They’re called half cloth and half gel, and you’ll be glad when you meet them.

What are acrylic mediums?

Fabric medium and gel medium are thick fluids made from the same type of acrylic polymers found in acrylic paints, but without the pigments that give paints their colors. They look opaque when wet but are colorless when dry. Each has a different role to play in enhancing your canvas painting.

What is fabric medium and how can I use it for painting?

The fabric medium serves a number of useful purposes in fabric painting:

• Thins or thickens acrylic fabric paints without affecting their color.
• Decreases drying time so you can mix colors without worrying about them drying before you’re done.
• It prevents the fabric from stiffening as the paint or ink dries.
• When colors are diluted with water, adding fabric medium minimizes color bleeding.
• When painting rough or heavy fabrics like canvas, the fabric medium helps the paint soak into the surface so you can cover well without having to scrub the surface first.

How much fabric medium should I use?

To mix colors or extend wet weather, mix medium 1:1 with acrylic paint. Add more paint for a more opaque look and use more medium for a more translucent effect. You can apply the medium directly to the fabric to mix colors.

To minimize color bleeding when using water-diluted paints, mix fabric medium 5:1 with fabric paint.

What is gel medium and how does it help with fabric painting?

Gel medium does some of the same things that fabric medium does: Like fabric medium, it extends the drying time of acrylic paints or inks, giving you more time to work on a painting and perfect your prints. color mixtures. The gel medium also serves a number of other useful purposes in fabric painting and textile arts. Gel medium comes in several different thicknesses and gloss or matte finishes. Use the gel medium for:

• Glue paper or objects to fabric to make collages.
• Create a permanent protective layer for collages or paintings that is UV resistant, water resistant and non-yellowing.
• Seal porous surfaces before painting.
• Turn any fabric into a DIY fuse. Simply cover the back of the fabric with a thin, even layer of gel medium, allow to dry, cut the fabric to the desired shape, and then use an ironing cloth to iron the gel-coated fabric onto the background fabric.
• Use as a substitute for plaster to paint with acrylic paints on canvas. Thicker gel mediums will show off your brush strokes and help create a three-dimensional (dimensional) impasto effect in your painting.
• Transfer images from paper or transparencies to fabric.

Where can I buy cloth medium and gel medium?

Acrylic mediums are available at art or craft supply stores just about anywhere.