Everything you need to know about ARA Acrylics
🎨 Concentrated colour
ARA Artists Acrylics have a high pigment content, giving you a strong, clean result without needing a large amount of paint. Their high tinting strength offers intense colour and excellent performance, whether you use them on their own or mix them with other colours.
🌈 Pure pigments for beautiful mixes
Many colours in the range are based on a single pigment rather than ready-made mixes of several pigments. This helps you create cleaner, more controlled mixes while keeping the vibrancy and clarity of the shades.
🖌️ Smooth texture
Their formula is designed to offer a smooth texture, with intensity and a bright colour result. They spread easily and evenly, whether you work with a brush, palette knife or roller. The smooth texture is especially helpful in techniques where you want clean application and good colour transfer.
🌗 Transparency level: what Opaque, Semi-Opaque and Transparent mean
In artist acrylics, the transparency level shows how much the colour allows the surface or previous layer underneath to show through. You will often see it marked with international symbols:
■ Opaque
The filled black square means the colour has high covering power. It covers the surface more easily and gives a strong, full colour presence.
◩ Semi-Opaque or Semi-Transparent
The half black / half white square shows that the colour sits between opaque and transparent. It covers partially, while still allowing part of the base or previous layers to remain visible.
□ Transparent
The white square means the colour allows more of the surface underneath to show through. It is useful for colour washes, glazing, depth and layered applications.
✨ What does this mean in practice?
In artist acrylics, transparency is not an absolute indication of the final coverage. An opaque colour has stronger covering power, but this does not mean it will completely hide every layer underneath with one application. A transparent colour, on the other hand, is designed to allow more visual interaction with the layers below.
The final coverage depends on how you work with the paint: how much you apply, whether you use a brush, palette knife or roller, whether you thin it with water or medium, what surface you apply it to and how many layers you build. This is why artist acrylics are widely used for layering, gel printing, mixed media and art journaling. They allow you to create successive layers, either letting part of the previous surface remain visible or gradually increasing coverage with additional passes.
☀️ High lightfastness
The lightfastness of ARA Artists Acrylics is measured on the Blue Wool Scale, the internationally recognised scale for how well a colour withstands light exposure. The scale rates lightfastness from 0, meaning not lightfast, to 8, the highest lightfastness rating. The colours in the range have a rating of at least 7/8 when used in full tone and at least 6/8 when mixed with titanium white. In simple terms, these are highly lightfast colours, made to keep their intensity and vibrancy for many years without fading easily, even when exposed to light.
🧩 For many surfaces and applications
Thanks to the strong adhesion of the 100% acrylic binder, the paint can be used for many applications and surfaces. It is suitable for canvas, paper, cardboard, wood and other porous surfaces. It is suitable for painting, mixed media, collage, art journaling, gel prints, monoprinting and layering projects.
🖼️ Ideal for gel plate and printing
ARA Artists Acrylics work beautifully on gel plate because they have a smooth texture, strong pigmentation and the right working time. They roll out evenly, transfer cleanly onto paper and help you build interesting surfaces with successive layers. They are ideal for gel printing, monoprinting, mixed media, collage, art journaling and layering projects.
📏 Suitable for large surfaces
Their high performance and strong pigment content make ARA a practical choice for larger works, canvases and surfaces where you need intense colour, good coverage and economical use.
🏛️ Produced by Old Holland
ARA Artists Acrylics are produced in the Netherlands, in the factory of Old Holland Classic Colours, a historic manufacturer of artists’ colours. The range is based on an Old Holland recipe, with a focus on consistent quality, clarity and high colour performance.
