What is Heavy Body Acrylic Paint?

While it may not be a particularly heavy question, there's more to heavy body acrylics than simply being “acrylic paint but thicker”. In this article, we’ll elaborate on what heavy body acrylic paint is and offer inspiration on how you can go about using it.

Heavy body acrylics have a higher viscosity than standard acrylics, coming out of the tube with a denser, more buttery consistency that keeps its shape without levelling out. Unlike standard acrylic, heavy body is stiff enough to hold peaks and brush strokes without the need for additional thickening agents. This makes it ideal for the impressionist style of thick impasto works—like those of Paul Cézanne and Van Gogh. It should be noted, however, that the impressionist painters of the 1890s used thickened oil paint, as modern acrylic paint only started to come around the 1950s.

The Starry Night by Van Gogh's creates a flow and motion to the painting using this brush strokes, despite being painted in oil it's a great example of the impasto technique.

Nowadays, heavy body acrylic paints are widely available to artists and are produced by many manufacturers. Daler-Rowney, Liquitex, and GOLDEN all offer ranges of artists' quality heavy body acrylic, which feature a wide variety of bold, highly-pigmented colours. GOLDEN also offer a number of shimmering iridescent colours, which are brilliant for adding a pearl-like shimmer to your paints. In addition, GOLDEN and Liquitex also offer a range of additional acrylic mediums you can add to the paint to give it an even thicker texture, or change the dried finish from matt to either gloss or satin.

If a more economical paint is needed, then we are more than happy to recommend our own STUDIO Heavy Body Acrylic. This cost-effective option can act as a perfect starting place for someone looking to experiment with heavy bodied paints, or for artists searching to add bulk colour to their palette at a reasonable price. Not only that, they come in a robust range of 31 highly pigmented colours.

This combination of colour, strength, and consistency gives heavy body paint similar qualities to oil paint, but without the long drying times that oils tend to suffer. This means you can build up thick layers of strong colour quickly with only minimal waiting between applications.

Take note of where the paint has crested around the edges of mark, where its oozed from under the palette knife and created a raise lip of colour.

Heavy body acrylic's thicker consistency makes it an ideal medium to use with stiff bristle brushes, such as hog hair, or for application with palette knives, which allow artists to achieve big, chunky marks or wispy curling peaks.

You can apply clean, smooth swatches of paint and then run back through them with a silicone painting wedge, the tip of a palette knife, or the end of your brush to score and texture the paint’s surface. Once dry, you’ll have a crisp texture rendered in the paint where you’ve scraped and pulled at the paint. Such techniques can help you to achieve some stunning effects, where the light and shadow of the texture is just as much a part of the painting as the pigment in the canvas.

A piece from "White on White" a series of ghostly impasto portraits by Salman Khoshroo.
Check his instagram @salmankhoshroo for more stunning work.

Here at ARTdiscount, we have a variety of heavy body acrylic ranges available, with options perfect for beginners, students, and professionals. You can find the full collection on our website. However, if you're just too excited to get started, we've collated a few highlights here to help you with your choice.

	ARTdiscount STUDIO Heavy Body Acrylic - 200ml Part of the ARTdiscount collection, these heavy body acrylic paints are made from high-quality, eco-friendly, water-based pigments and finest acrylic emulsions. With 200ml of paint in each tube, they make a fantastic, economical choice for artists of all skill levels.
	Daler-Rowney System3 Heavy Body Acrylic - 59ml Daler-Rowney System3 Heavy Body Acrylics, powered by Cryla, offer a high quality pigments with great heavy body consistency, offering a unique peak retention. They have superior pigment loading and can be thinned with water. Lightfast and durable. Also available in 500ml bottles, though less colours are available.
	Daler-Rowney Cryla Professional Heavy Body Acrylic - 75ml Daler-Rowney Cryla Artists' Acrylic Paints are the first acrylic colour ever launched in Europe. They combine acrylic colour tradition and innovation. Cryla Artists’ Acrylic Paints are heavy body acrylic colours and apply thickly with good mark retention and work especially well with painting knives.
	Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic - 59ml Liquitex HEAVY BODY is thick, high viscosity, pigment-rich professional acrylic colour, ideal for impasto and texture. With a high concentration of lightfast artist-quality pigment and a satin finish, Heavy Body Acrylic gives you rich, permanent colour. Good surface drag provides excellent handling and blending characteristics with increased open-working time.
	GOLDEN Heavy Body Acrylics - 59ml GOLDEN artist acrylic is known for its exceptionally smooth, thick consistency. It contains the largest assortment of unique pure pigments in a 100% acrylic dispersion polymer available to the professional artist. These colours offer excellent permanency and lightfastness. There are no fillers, extenders, opacifiers, toners or dyes added. Each colour is formulated differently depending on the nature of the pigment.