Social distancing has been fairly uncomplicated for my family. I have my own room and a new collection of baby plants to keep me company. It’s safe to say that everything was going well, until I ran out of acrylic paint. The questions started running around in my head. What do I do? Should I order paint?  Why is everything so expensive now? A lot more questions and a bit of research later,  I decided to make a trip to Home Depot for sample sized interior house paint.

We all have heard of Jackson Pollock and his large abstract paintings.  After doing some digging I found out that a lot of his paintings were done with house paints and ended up chipped and ripped over time because house paints aren’t intended to be used as an artist paint.

Still, I decided to march on down to my local Home Depot on our family grocery shopping day to judge this new medium for myself.  Along with the paints, I decided it would be a great idea to buy spray primer, spray sealant, rags , razors, and other materials for different projects. 

I decided to buy primer white, black, red, blue, and yellow, Behr house paint, in sample sizes at the amazing price of 4 dollars for an 8.oz jar. Along with the paints I also purchased two cans of spray paint for around the same price.  Roughly 30 bucks later and some patience, this is what I found:

House paint is vibrant, light fast, and great for flat color placement, but quick-drying and self-leveling.  This paint does not work like an oil paint or even relatively close to gouache or watercolor. After working with the medium, it is most comparable to fluid acrylic paint with a record fast drying time.  

After work-shopping this paint and using some of it in commissions I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a paint that every artist should have in their kits- because this type of paint is so inexpensive and is the perfect material to work on thumbnail sketches with, decide on color stories, and work on new or different styles of painting. 

I used water as the paint medium, but, in the future, I’d like to see what the different effects acrylic mediums would have on this type of paint.  In summation, this paint is not artist Acrylic paint, and wasn’t intended to be used in such a way, but, like other materials, you the Artist should decide what you want to create art with.