If you’re just getting started with fabric painting, you may not have heard of these two helpful aids that seasoned artists rely on to make painting easier and create better-looking painted pieces. They are called half cloth and half gel, and you will be happy when you meet them.
What are acrylic media?
Cloth medium and gel medium are thick fluids made from the same type of acrylic polymers used in acrylic paints, but without the pigments that give paints their colors. They look dull when wet, but colorless when dry. Each has a different role to play in enhancing your fabric paint.
What is cloth medium and how can I use it for painting?
The cloth medium serves several useful purposes in cloth painting:
- Thin or thicken acrylic fabric paints without affecting their color.
- Decrease the drying time so you can blend the colors without having to worry about them drying out before you finish.
- Keep the fabric from hardening as the paint or ink dries.
- When colors are diluted with water, adding cloth medium minimizes color bleeding.
- When you paint rough or heavy fabrics like canvas, the fabric medium helps the paint penetrate the surface so you get good coverage without having to scrub the surface first.
How much fabric medium should I use?
To mix colors or extend wet time, 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 medium directly to the fabric to mix colors.
To minimize color bleeding when using water-thinned paints, mix 5: 1 fabric medium with fabric paint.
What is gel medium and how does it help with fabric painting?
Gel medium does some of the same things as cloth medium – like cloth medium, it extends the drying time of acrylic paints or inks, giving you more time to work on a paint and perfect your color combinations. The gel medium also serves a number of other useful purposes in fabric painting and textile arts. Gel medium comes in various thicknesses and gloss or matte finishes. Use gel medium to:
- 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 does not yellow.
- Seal porous surfaces before painting.
- Turn any fabric into a DIY fusion. Simply coat the back of the fabric with a thin, even layer of medium gel, let it dry, cut the fabric to the desired shape, and then use a press 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 media will show brush strokes and help create a three-dimensional (dimensional) filling effect in your painting.
- Transfer images from paper or transparencies to fabric.
Where can I buy medium and gel medium fabric?
Acrylic mediums are available at art or craft supply stores anywhere.