At last count, Golden Artist Colors, Inc. has created well over 300 professional quality acrylic paint products! I’ve been using many of them - mostly the paints, gels, mediums and pastes - in my art and craft work for over 18 years, and they are hands-down my favorite brand. On my PAPER TRANSFORMATIONS DVD I demonstrate how I use these products to decorate water color papers for book and paper craft projects. And on ART UNSCRIPTED I use Golden Paints and Light Molding Paste to color and texturize three foam board shrines, and one of my decorated papers as a surface treatment.

On June 1st I attended a Golden lecture in Seattle, Washington, at Daniel Smith Art Materials, and Judy and I attended one last year on Washington’s Whidbey Island at Casey’s Crafts. Both lectures were presented by Barbara De Pirro, one of Golden’s Working Artists. These free 2-hour educational presentations thoroughly cover Golden’s acrylic mediums and pigments, glazing, gels, pastes, grounds, varnishes and health and safety factors. As Barbara says on her website:

You will learn how to mix paints with various products to create unique textural surfaces. How to use different products to create surfaces for textiles, airbrushing, monoprints, murals, sculptures, book making, oil painting, watercolor, calligraphy and all drawing mediums.

These lectures are a veritable gold mine of information. Golden’s huge array of products are on display, and dozens of boards showcasing various processes are talked about and passed around the room for hands-on viewing. On top of the visual and verbal information, everybody receives a fantastic handout with excellent explanations of the products, a color mixing chart, actual paint swatches, a bag of GOLDEN samples and more, as shown below.