Product Review – STUDIO ACRYL by GERSTAECKER – by Robert Rost

If you want to work with acrylic paint as an artist, the choice of brands and types of acrylic paint is enormous. So big that it is sometimes difficult to know what the differences are and also it can be difficult make a choice.

The viscosity — how thick or thin the paint is — is usually an important point to base a decision on, because the method or applied technique is related to this. Above all, the quality of the paint is important.

From my experience as a painter and teacher I did a test run with the STUDIO ACRYL acrylic paint at the request of GERSTAECKER and examined the properties of that paint. Among other things, colour intensity and pigmentation, colour shift and appearance, viscosity, mixing force, degree of coverage, lightfastness, adhesion, gloss, and drying time were discussed.

• GERSTAECKER | STUDIO ACRYL acrylic paint

For a basic palette I recommend choosing both a warm and cold nondeviant of the primary colours with white, some earth tones and a Payne’s grey to reach various tonalities and obtain brown values.

A list of colours for a basic palette:

204 Lemon yellow – 206 Cadmium yellow hue – 306 Vermillion – 310 Carmine red – 410 Ultramarine – 418 Coeruleum blue – 102 Titanium white – 602 Yellow ochre – Burnt Siena -618 Burnt umber – 706 Black – 704 Payne’s grey

Of course, you can expand the palette with specific unique colours that simply cannot be mixed yourself like Phthalo green, Phthalo blue and Magenta or colours that you like to use and are not easy to mix yourself.

I used the mediums from WINSOR & NEWTON:

• WINSOR & NEWTONTM | ProfessionalTM MEDIUMS — for acrylic paint

Good brushes are also essential. Opt for brushes with synthetic hair, because that guarantees the best application of acrylic paint. A few suggestions:

• GERSTAECKER | Vernisage brushes — synthetic hair
• I LOVE ART | Mangoesto brushes — synthetic hair
• O’color | School brushes 72-assorted — synthetic hair

All too often when working with acrylic paint a brush is chosen with bristles. That’s not such a good idea—the bristles absorb water, causing it to accumulate in the brush together with the paint and this means the paint will not flow evenly out of the brush. This gives less control over the paint and makes it difficult to work tighter.

Hog hair brushes are suitable for dry brush & impressionistic techniques, where the (dry) paint is more attached to the brush than it is absorbed by the brush. The coarseness of the bristle then helps to obtain texture or to distribute the paint in a dry, spherical way.

TIP! You get the best of both worlds with synthetic hair, which is a vegan-friendly alternative to natural bristles. For example:

• Raphaël | L’ IMPRESSIONNISTE brushes — synthetic hair

You will need something to mix your paint on, there are many different types of pallets. It can be anything, but if you don’t feel like cleaning, a disposable or tear-off palette is fine:

• I LOVE ART | Tearing palette

I worked on acrylic paper and on panels as my preferred substrate:

• CANSON | ACRYLIC acrylic paper

• WINSOR & NEWTONTM | GALERIA Acrylic Block
• GERSTAECKER | Painter panel — cotton on MDF

TIP! The Gerstaecker panels are highly recommended. Universally grounded cotton with a fine structure, maroufed (glued) on MDF panels of approximately 3.2 mm thick.

First impressions

When I first saw the paint, it was still in the tube. That packaging gave a fairly neutral and clean impression — it is not a very fancy design and the tubes are matt transparent, so the colour in the tube is not very clear.

It would be nice if the tube were a bit more transparent and show the colours a little more, but a completely transparent tube would allow sunlight to pass through and may affect the durability of the paint — perhaps it’s for a good reason for the choice of this packaging.

Once paint comes out of the tube, that uncertain feeling quickly disappears and we see a beautiful acrylic paint that shines powerfully.

I want to get started!

Viscosity and fish density

The viscosity of STUDIO ACRYL has a nice consistency, between liquid and stiffness — the paint comes out smoothly. As soon as I pick it up with brush or palette knife, the paint turns creamy and smooth and allows itself to spread easily over the substrate and is easy to mix.

How a paint is composed we also call composition — comparable to the structure of a piece of music. All paints consist of a mixture of pigments and a binder that ensures that the pigments stick together and form a consistent paste. With acrylic paint, the binder is a combination of acrylic resin particles and water, a so-called polymer emulsion.

The water prevents the acrylic resin from drying and hardening immediately. The resin particles are self-transparent, but appear milky in colour in the binder because the addition of water affects the light reflection. An acrylic binder is thick, liquid and milky white when wet, but after drying, it forms a flexible, colourless, transparent film.

The quality of a paint depends on the quality of the pigments and binders used, but also on the number of pigments used — the pigment load — and the recipe in general. The extent to which a pigment is ground and rubbed in the binder — the dispersion — also determines the brilliance of the paint.

Colour chart

Like every study/studio-quality paint, the colour chart of STUDIO ACRYL is a lot smaller than the available colours of professional acrylic paint and you will not find any real cadmium colours or cobalt colours here — these pigments are too expensive for a studio-quality acrylic paint.

That said — the STUDIO ACRYL gives you a beautiful and balanced spectrum of 32 colours:

• 4 types of blue and turquoise (Turkish blue)
• 4 types of red and 1 orange
• 5 types of yellow
• 4 types of green
• 1 magenta and 1 violet.
• 3 earth tones
• 5 metallics
• 1 grey, 1 black and 1 white

Enough choice of variants per colour and there are plenty of options to mix many colours yourself!

For a choice of three primary colours, 418 Coeruleum blue, 204 Lemon yellow and 306 Vermillion could work. To work with a system of six primary colours you could add 410 Ultramarine, 310 Carmine red and 206 Cadmium yellow hue.

On the image above you see a colour circle that I made with these colours. The primary colours I have selected are bright and provide strong secondary colours. In addition to the colour wheel, I have also reduced the primary and secondary colours with white.

To gain insight into the colours, I mixed different variants of the same colour using different colours each time. For example, I mixed green with blue and four different yellows, but each time with a different blue and a different green as the result shows. I then reduced the mixtures with white each time.

These mixtures all consist of a ratio of approximately 1:1. Of course, you can create many variations on this and fill an entire book with colours if you wish. For now, this provides sufficient insight for me and clearly demonstrates how the characteristics of the different colours influence a mixed colour.

TIP! I strongly advise you to make these types of swatches yourself, because it will give you a lot of insight into the properties of the colours in mixtures. It is a fun and relaxed way to learn more about colour and eventually you also get a handy reference in your hands to choose colours when you work.

Brilliant and colour strength

With the colour strength of a paint, we look at how much pigment is needed to achieve a certain colour concentration. As artists, we want our paint to have a strong colour strength so that it does not lose colour intensity if we are going to dilute it or mix it with other colours. A paint with a good colour strength produces beautiful, colourful mixtures; paint with a weak colour strength produces grey and weak mixing colours.

All these mixing colours are obtained directly by mixing the paint on a palette directly with each other.

But you can also get beautiful colours by placing transparent colour layers over each other and so mixing optically.

This works best by adding a liquid medium to dilute the colour while ensuring that the paint keeps enough bond. I used a glazing medium from WINSOR & NEWTONTM in this test.

Here you see:

• 414 Phthalo Blue over 306 Vermillion gives purple
• 424 Phthalo turquoise over 414 Phthalo Blue gives dark phthalo blue
• 206 Cadmium yellow hue over 424 Phthalo turquoise gives green
• 316 Magenta over 206 Cadmium yellow hue gives red

One way to examine the brilliance and colour strength is to look at the colour shade of the tone — the colour of the paint as it comes out — and in the undertone — as paint is diluted with water or a liquid medium.

With STUDIO ACRYL, the paint looks directly brilliant in terms of the mass tone — both in thick blobs, flat-off with a palette knife or applied with a brush. The paint looks clear, fresh and the colour radiates vigorously.

In wet conditions, colours always look deeper and more brilliant than in dried state. Same here with this paint. As soon as the paint is dried, the deep colour disappears slightly and the paint dries up more matt. With a thin coat of paint this is not really noticeable, with thicker layers this is clearly visible.

This has not so much to do with the colour concentration or colour strength, but mainly because the paint becomes matt when drying. You can easily customize this to your liking by adding a gloss medium.

We can of course make an observation about the general colour strength of a type of paint, but within a colour chart we always find differences in colour strength between the different colours.

A Phthalo blue has much more colour-strength than a Cerulean blue, this is due to the type of pigment used to make the colour.

One way to discover the colour strength is to see how strong the colour remains in a mixture of approximately 50%. Titanium white — we call this reducing with white. The reduction also reveals the undertone of the colour.

That undertone also becomes clear when the colour is diluted with a little water or medium. But because too much water also undermines the binding of the paint, I will dilute the paint with a liquid medium, so that the bond remains intact.

In the image below you can see two types of blue that I have both reduced in seven steps with 50% Titanium white. As you can see clearly, 414 Phthalo blue is a much more powerful blue than 418 Coeruleum blue.

• 1 — 100% blue
• 2 — 50% blue + 50% Titanium white
• 3 — 25% blue + 75% Titanium white
• 4 — 12.5% blue + 87.5% Titanium white
• 5 — 6,25% blue + 93.75% Titanium white
• 6 — 3,125% blue + 96.875% Titanium white
• 7 — 1.56% blue + 98,44% Titanium white
• 8 — 0.78% blue + 99.22% Titanium white

418 Coeruleum blue is a much less dominant blue than 414 Phthalo blue.

In the swatches below you can see a green mixture of 418 Coeruleum blue with 2 08 Genuine yellow in different proportions.

In the swatches below I added a bit of 414 Phthalo blue to the colour 306 Vermillion to see how these colours affect each other in a mixture.

By the way, this blue is so dominant that a very small amount, half a pinhead has a lot of effect on the mixture!

To be able to say something about the colour strength of the STUDIO ACRYL I also looked at the mass tone and undertone of the paint and judged it from my experience. In addition, I also made several mixtures consisting of various contrasting colours to see how dominant some colours are.

I conclude that the colour strength of the STUDIO ACRYL is strong and does not lead to greyish or muddy mixtures.

Gloss degree

From the tube, the paint has a nice shine in wet conditions, making the colours look brilliant. Just like every acrylic paint, the paint dries with a satin gloss and the thicker you apply the paint, it seems to dry more matt.

If you want your paint to dry with more shine, you can easily add a gloss medium — that could be a liquid medium or a gel medium.

Color shift

Each acrylic paint will show a colour shift during drying and will look different in wet condition than in dry condition. This is always the case with acrylic paint and has to do with the binder used in acrylic paint.

The binder of acrylic paint is an acrylic resin dispersion, a synthetic product, consisting of small balls of plastic that are made sticky by plastic or film makers. The water in the binder makes it look milky in its wet state and clearer as it dries. Because the water evaporates during the drying process, the binder will become more transparent and so the colour of acrylic paint will become darker.

This colour shift can be less noticeable in lighter colours — like yellow — and more noticeable in darker colours — like ultramarine blue. The degree of colour shift is different per type of acrylic paint, because there are simply differences between the types and quality of the binders used.

As a test I applied a variety of colours thinly to a sheet. After drying, I put the same paint next to it in the same way two weeks later and immediately took a picture to make any colour shift transparent.

Conclusion: after two weeks there is hardly any colour shift.

NB The colour shift spoken of here has nothing to do with the lightfastness of the paint. In case of poor or moderate lightfastness, a colour shifts or fades in time under the influence of UV in light.

Shrinkage

Acrylic paint dries by evaporation. As the water from the paint evaporates, the acrylic polymer spheres fuse together to a continuous film and the paint layer will lose volume. The layer will also slightly absorb at the edges while the mixture dries and shrinks. The thicker the paint is applied, the clearer these changes will be. This also means that brush strokes will be much less pronounced once the paint has dried.

If you want to preserve textures or expressive keys, you can add a gel medium or texture medium to your paint. With heavier versions of these means you can build very thick layers of acrylic paint, which you can even edit with a knife after drying.

In the test I made some samples where I applied the STUDIO ACRYL thick, thickened with a gel medium, a structure medium and a model fit. This is to show how you can get nice thick structures with just a little bit of paint and such a medium, without sagging them while drying.

TIP! For the test with the modelling, see the image matched with the piece over drying times.

The drying time of acrylic paint depends on various factors, such as the composition, humidity and temperature in the workspace, the absorption degree of the substrate and the thickness of the applied paint. A thicker layer of acrylic paint has a longer drying and curing time.

The drying time is also determined by the pigment used for a colour and whether the colour is transparent or opaque. Red and yellow colours usually dry more slowly than blue colours or earthy tones. Usually, after about 10 minutes, the paint is hand-dried and completely cured after 3 to 4 days, but you can add extra layers as soon as the paint is touch dry. Varnish can be applied after at least 4 days. The use of an acrylic medium can accelerate or slowed down the drying time depending on the medium used. Do not apply acrylic paint at temperatures below 10oC.

• 1 — Phthalo blue pure, applied in thin layer — drying time approx. 4 min.
• 2 — Phthalo blue pure, applied in slightly thicker layer — drying time about 40 min.
• 3 — Phthalo blue pure, applied in very thick layer — drying time approx. 2 hours and 40 min.
• 4 — Phthalo blue diluted with liquid medium, applied in thin layer — drying time approx. 2 min.
• 5 — Phthalo blue thickened with gel medium, applied in thick layer — thin parts drying time approx. 2 hours. thick parts dry time 5.5 hours
• 6 — Phthalo blue thickened with modelling paste, applied in thick layer — drying time about 4.5 hours

Axis degree of coverage

In this test I put all the colours on a strip that is half white and half black.

It gives a clear picture of the transparency and coverage of the colours when they are thinly applied. If you apply them a bit thicker, you will of course quickly get a better coverage ratio. Both transparency and coverage power are both good qualities of a colour and can be used specifically for certain techniques.

On the strip we see that the brown colours, the Payne’s Gray, Titanium White, Permanent green light, Olive Green, Violet and Black firmly cover. Yellow colours are never very opaque, except cadmium yellows, but they are not in this range.

Get the best out of your paint!

Since acrylic paint is a water-based paint, the majority of users only work with water to dilute the paint. However, if more than 25% of water is added, every acrylic paint will lose the bond and will no longer be able to form a beautiful paint film. The paint is pulled apart, as it were. This also results in qualities such as adhesion strength, lightfastness, gloss and colour strength lost.

Do you want to get more out of your paint and have more opportunities to work with acrylic paint? Then use a medium. With a liquid medium you can dilute acrylic paint, with a gel medium or a modelling paste you can thicken the paint. Because the binding remains intact when using these means, very nice layers of paint are created. The transparent paint films so that you can apply with acrylic paint mixed with a liquid medium you simply do not get with the use of only water!

On the image above you can see that acrylic paint only loses diluted with water bond and looks a bit scraped— the paint is pulled apart and loses coherence. There is no real paint film and the paint draws in the paper.

The acrylic paint that is diluted with a liquid medium remains nicely bound. The colour also looks nice and clear and forms a beautiful paint film on the paper. You can also see this when you scratch the paint layer.

As we saw before, STUDIO ACRYL aligned with a liquid acrylic medium also produces transparent glossy colour layers that allow you to get beautiful colour effects — this is also a great advantage of using a medium!

TIP! In the example above you see the effect you get when you apply a number of glazing layers, diluted with a liquid medium on top of each other and then drops of water into the wet glazing layers.

STUDIO ACRYL from GERSTAECKER is a beautiful, colour-strength and is a smooth paint with an average viscosity.

The colours deliver beautiful, bright and brilliant mixing colours. Therefore, they are perfect for experimenting with the colour theory and teaching the principles of acrylic painting. And this paint is also a must for advanced artists — and large consumers — who are looking for a good paint at an affordable price.

Moreover, in terms of colour intensity and viscosity, this paint can measure well with the studio quality of well-known A-brands. In terms of price, STUDIO ACRYL is one of the cheapest acrylic paints on the market of this quality.

TIP! Looking for a much more fluid paint for an economical price? Then I recommend you to try the NEO acrylic paint from GERSTAECKER!

About Robert

Robert Rost is a professional painter and lives and works in Rotterdam. He has a track record in the field of murals, studio paintings & portraits.

In addition to his painting practice, he has a lot of experience in the transfer of knowledge about painting materials and techniques. He taught at the Willem de Koonin g academy in Rotterdam and set up The Fine Art Collective in the Netherlands, with which he supported many academies and art students for many years with clinics and projects on the use of materials in collaboration with museums and professional artists.

He still develops many activities related to education and training, but now more focused on artists, teachers, and company staff. With his great passion for painting, he has been involved with many subjects and themes, but lately he has mainly focused on the theme of Crowd painting.

2025 — text: Robert Rost & editors Gerstaecker EN | 2025 — image: Robert Rost & editors Gerstaecker NL & GreatArt UK