Acrylic is a favored painting medium for both beginners and professionals alike for its easy setup, quick-drying properties, and malleable nature. Made out of pigments suspended in acrylic polymer, acrylic paint is water soluble but becomes water resistant when dry. A highly flexible paint medium, acrylic will provide a crisp, graphic paint edge that can be easily used to create thick paint strokes or thin washes, and it is suitable for use on a wide range of surfaces. Depending on your project ambitions, you will want to consider key factors such as color saturation and selection, permanence and finish, as well as viscosity and malleability. Our picks below will help you find the right acrylic paint set for your needs.
1. Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic Paint
Having produced the world’s first commercially available water-based acrylic back in 1956, Liquitex is well regarded for its high-quality products, and this set is no exception. With a classic selection of colors, it includes a dozen 22-milliliter tubes of professional-grade acrylic paint with superior clarity and vibrancy. As a high-viscosity paint, it delivers a smooth, thick, buttery feel, making it an ideal consistency for a wide variety of techniques and providing excellent handling and blending characteristics. This durable paint will give you a flexible, crack-free finish that is UV resistant for permanent color.
2. Golden Fluid Acrylic
Golden’s fluid paints have a body similar to that of heavy cream—they’re thick but silky, so they flow easily and offer top-notch covering power. If you’re familiar with the brand’s heavy-body line, you’ll recognize that these have the same impressive pigment strength despite the huge difference in viscosity. Pigments are finely dispersed and unaffected by extenders or fillers, so just a few drops of paint really go a long way. Paint flows uninterrupted from the brush without streaking. And the colors are easy to mix without muddying and dry true to form with a slightly glossy finish. This set comes with 10 single-ounce bottles in useful colors like Titanium White, Carbon Black, and Burnt Sienna.
3. Holbein Heavy-Body Acrylic Colors
Holbein also makes an excellent heavy-body paint that we’d consider an upgrade from Liquitex. If you’re willing to pay a little more, pick up this set of primary colors, which also comes with tubes of black and white, each with 60 milliliters of paint. The paint excels at holding sturdy peaks, ridges, and voluminous strokes. Made in Japan, they are also especially good for artists who prefer that their colors all carry roughly the same viscosity and lustrous sheen. The paints are heavily pigmented and offer spectacular coverage while delivering on color vibrancy. They also have wonderful flexibility to guard against cracking as well as a slower drying time than most acrylics, which provides more time for wet-on-wet painting.
4. Sennelier Artist Acrylique Set
For strong colors and a slightly softer texture, choose this acrylic set from Sennelier. This set of 10 21-milliliter tubes of professional-grade paint uses high-quality pigments for a saturated color that retains its clarity, purity, opacity, and stability over time. Due to its softer consistency, you’ll find that this paint is easy to mix and smooth on the canvas, making it a great choice for glazing and blending while still retaining a luminous color. It is suitable for use on a wide range of surfaces, providing a permanent, non-cracking, non-yellowing, water-resistant film.
5. Turner Acryl Gouache Set
This hybrid paint set from Turner will give you the opacity and matte properties of gouache with the durability of acrylic. Packaged in 20-milliliter tubes, these 18 hues of highly concentrated paint with a fluid consistency can be thinned with water for further spread and malleability while still retaining their color brilliance. An excellent choice for illustrators for its quick drying time and richness of pigment, this paint provides a flat, velvety finish that photographs well.