Acrylic 'Extender' and Model Color 'Smoke' - Review

Another day, another dig into the artist's goodie bag. This time it's a small vial (ok, plastic bottle) of acrylic extender that increases the volume of paint, maintains pigment while adding to transparency, and lengthens drying time. I don't know the brand as it was decanted for a much larger bottle, but I'm told most mediums with these qualities work in similar ways. I mixed this with the rather enigmatic "Smoke" from Model Color and set about my experimental ecclesiastical building.

The enigma and the extender

First off, I used it to add a couple of layers to some based-brown brickwork. All good here: nice application and the result was enhanced colour all round with some good shading in the cracks and crevices. Then as I grew more confident I started to shade in around the edges of some based-grey plaster over the main part of the walls. The result was even better then I hoped. With a little added water if was possible to draw the paint out from the corners and create really well blended shadow and ageing effects. The extended drying time meant that I could rework these 'shadows' after wiping the brush dry; or I could add more water. Either way resulted in greater control over the fade from shadow to light.

A hint of wall

Smoke is an interesting paint too. Much easier to control than a wash or ink and seemingly capable of doing all the things I always wished a wash would wangle (with apologies for not resisting the alliteration). By the way, during all of this I used my Pro Arte series 107 size 6 brush. It was excellent. Also: why the lack of decent WIP photos? Well, the new daylight bulbs are on order, so you'll just have to drink up the suspense for now...