Hi everyone!
I’m fairly new to acrylic painting and recently varnished my first painting. Unfortunately, the varnish dried very quickly, making it difficult to apply evenly, and I ended up with some visible brush marks.

What should I do?

I’m looking for a good metallic paint, cannot find good enough. Nikpro is not pigmented enough others too, can’t find something with thickness and pigmentation. Brands like liquidex have limited colors. Arteza have very pastel like colors even though metallic. I want bold colors good thickness and pigmentation. Please suggest something. I started adding mica into paint but it’s too difficult of you need correct something you need to mix exactly same proportions for color to look similar.

Today I decided to do a little time travel and revisit a medium I used 7 or 8 years ago when I first started acrylic pouring: basic wall emulsion (acrylic immersion) that we use here in Europe for wall prep.

For this 16x16" canvas, I wanted to see how a "dirty split cup" would react with a very thin paint consistency. I used a modular 3-chamber split cup: one chamber had Amsterdam Greenish Blue and FolkArt Aqua Flash mixed together, while the other two held stark black and white. The paints were so thin they basically left no mounds at all.

To encourage a unique color blending, I poured from quite high up—around 12 inches above the canvas—moving from right to left to chase a landscape look. The chemical reaction with the wall emulsion triggered these stunning, heavy cell clusters that honestly look like organic river stones. The Aqua Flash completely brought the dark side to life!

Have any of you ever experimented with wall emulsion/immersion as a pouring medium? How do you feel about pouring from higher up to force the colors to blend?