Liquitex Acrylics Special Release Muted Collection

Liquitex have created a Special Release Muted Collection of five colours in all three ranges of their acrylics: Heavy Body, Soft Body and Ink. The colours match across the ranges and all work seamlessly together.

Jackson’s stock the entire range of the Liquitex Muted Collection in singles and beautifully presented sets.
The new special release Muted Collection has five colours: Pink, Violet, Turquoise, Green and Grey – that match across the three ranges. This is a tonal palette with a subtle, muted character, not a mixing palette. The muted colours are conveniently pre-mixed to use for mood and atmosphere.

Three Ranges of Consistency

Liquitex make three consistencies of professional quality acrylics. Each consistency is equally concentrated, with no loss of performance because it has been thickened.

• Liquitex Inks are extremely fluid, water resistant, permanent and completely lightfast. Ideal for airbrushing, watercolour effects and screen-printing. They are very concentrated and can be watered down for paler uses and it flows beautifully.
• Liquitex Soft Body has a smooth and soft consistency for maximum coverage with few brushmarks.
• Liquitex Heavy Body has a thick, buttery consistency to retain crisp brushstrokes and knife marks.

Liquitex Muted Collection

Liquitex Professional Ink for Dip Pen Drawings

For this drawing Duncan used the Liquitex Ink in Muted Grey. He said that the Muted Grey has a sort of violet tint. He found that the acrylic ink flowed off the pen well, and was very suited to dip pen use. Because it dries water resistant it is good for washes over the top of the drawing, and as it dries quickly you only have to wait five minutes or so.

Using Liquitex Muted Collection colours in Ink and Soft Body for Watercolour Painting

Christine used the Soft Body and the Inks for her test paintings. She says “As a watercolourist, I was intrigued to try to consistency of the soft body and see the different intensities of colours, whether I could layer and get the depth of colour with such a limited palette. I was surprised with how easily the different colours blended together and liked the fact that the colour moved easily across the canvas board. I added into the palette Jackson’s Artist Acrylic in Titanium White to see the tonal range of each colour and they mixed perfectly with each other. When added with white, the muted tones take on a lovely opacity and would be great for blocking in flat colour. With the muted grey, I would say it had more of a violet/purple undertone and so would be useful it you wanted to create your own black.

The inks are highly pigmented and when you first drop them out into a palette, if you aren’t paying attention you might not realise what colour you’re using. As soon as you begin to dilute the ink with water you can see the colour emerge. What I would say about the inks, the drying time is a lot quicker than I expected – they will be great for someone that is used to working quickly and expressively. The inks do not really re-wet once dried and so lifting colour could prove difficult if you have saturated your paper with ink. The great thing about the inks is that you can really dilute them down to create delicate washes with hints of colour.”

Liquitex Muted Collection colours Ink and Soft Body colour charts and a quick painting with Soft Body on canvas

I found the colours were dark on the palette and so were a bit hard to tell apart when they were full-strength. I loved the flow of the ink and the smooth, even coverage of the soft body. The muted colours are conveniently pre-mixed to use for moody pictures like a moonlight seascape. They are not designed to be used as a mixing palette but straight from the tube ready-mixed for convenience.

The Liquitex Muted Collection colour Inks are quite dark on the palette when they are full strength, though they lighten when they dry. I have put a section with a very weak tint next to each on this palette to show the actual colour better.

A colour chart of the Liquitex Muted Collection colours in Soft Body.
The outer ring is full strength the two inner rings have progressively more water added. The blobs on the outside show the thickness and the colour when mixed with titanium white.

A colour chart of the Liquitex Muted Collection colours Inks.
The outer ring is full strength the two inner rings have progressively more water added.

I used the Liquitex Muted Collection acrylics in Soft Body and Ink on a Jackson’s fine linen canvas panel, great colours for a moody seascape.

Liquitex Heavy Body Artist Colour
This acrylic has a thick consistency for traditional art techniques using brushes or knives, as well as for experimental, mixed media, collage and printmaking applications. Impasto applications retain crisp brush stroke and knife marks. Good surface drag provides excellent handling and blending characteristics with increased open-working time. High pigment load produces rich, brilliant, permanent colour. The low-odour acrylic resin base represents the latest in acrylic resin technology, offering increased open time and producing colours of great clarity with very low wet-to-dry value shift. The paint films are highly flexible, durable, non-yellowing, UV resistant, water-resistant and pH neutral when dry.

Click on the underlined link to go to the current offers on the range of the Liquitex Muted Collection on the Jackson’s Art Supplies website.
Postage on orders shipped standard to mainland UK addresses is free for orders of £39.