For a few years now I have been noticing the word Flashe listed as a material on painting labels. It is almost always listed in conjunction with oil paint in contemporary painting on canvas or panel. I occasionally see it when I am looking at work on an artist’s website and each year when I’m going around the Frieze Art Fair it pops up a few times. It turns out that the famous Op Artist Victor Vasarely used Flashe for his work in the 1960s and the painter David Salle started using Flashe a few years ago. Painters Mary Weatherford and Gordon Cheung also use Flashe paints.
Flashe paint was developed in 1954 for stage scenery painters but both fine artists and illustrators soon discovered it. Flashe is similar to acrylic gouache but is a vinyl paint. It is made by the French company Lefranc Bourgeois who explain that it uses a vinyl emulsion binder that has a longer molecular structure than acrylic, so it is more supple and flexible. The finer, softer resin is a fatter emulsion that allows a perfectly flat and smooth surface with no brushmarks. It is a creamy, soft-body paint that dries with a very fine “peach skin” surface texture, that doesn’t look at all plasticky. They say it adheres well to all surfaces, even without a primer: glass, metal, polystyrene, wood, plastic, leather, stone, cardboard, paper and canvas. They also say it is excellent for both indoor and outdoor mural painting as it resists the elements since it is elastic, permanent and very lightfast.
The Characteristics of Flashe Paint
The matt finish also means it provides a good tooth for painting oil paint on, so it can be successfully used for underpainting. It has great covering power even in a thin layer, so the paint goes a long way. It dilutes with water and has a high pigment load so the colours stay strong even when very diluted in watercolour-like washes. The great tinting strength means it takes very little colour to tint white paint. It is fast-drying, with no odour and it is waterproof when dry. Of particular interest to illustrators and designers, the deeply matt finish is non-reflective so it can be scanned or photographed successfully. Flashe paint is available from Jackson’s in 76 colours in two sizes – an 80ml plastic tube and a 125ml glass jar. Black and white are also available in large glass jars of 400ml and 750ml.
What Artists are Saying
- In addition to fine art painting, Flashe is also popular for illustration, graphics, comics, model making, fresco and interior mural decoration.
- Some artists report that it handles differently to acrylic gouache.
- There are many reports that it mixes well with acrylics and acrylic mediums, with the exception of a few colours that may “curdle”.
- Most artists love the opacity but a few artists have said they are not as opaque as acrylic gouache or at least not in all colours.
- When transitioning from traditional acrylics, many artists found they liked that there is no colour shift from wet to dry as you get in many traditional acrylic ranges.
- If you are sensitive or have allergies to acrylic paints you may find these vinyl paints do not bother you.
Examples of Work
You can see Flashe in use in the photos is this earlier blog article – Paula Nahmod’s Paintings Capture the Energy of The City. Look for it listed under some of the paintings and you can see jars of Flashe on her painting table in the studio.
Lefranc Bourgeois Flashe Paint at Jackson’s
Click on the underlined link to go to the current offers on Lefranc Bourgeois Flashe Paint on the Jackson’s Art Supplies website.
Postage on orders shipped standard to mainland UK addresses is free for orders of £39.
I love the look of these paints but I’m
worried about the environment. What is the
impact of acrylic, flashe paint, water
mixable and traditional oil paint on the
environment?
Hi Ginny
There are a lot of things to consider when you are trying to be environmentally ethical and it often comes down to what you choose to be the more important concerns. For example, you may not wish to use animal-hair brushes but the alternative is plastic-hair brushes which aren’t biodegradable.
The acrylic and vinyl paints are plastic which might raise some concerns about what you pour down the drain and the future biodegradability of any painting you produce that may end up in the bin. If you wish to remove plastic and toxic substances from your work, and you wish to use a paint that is water-resistant when dry, I would recommend oil paint which is made from linseed oil, safflower oil, walnut oil or poppyseed oil – all non-toxic. The higher-end oil paints contain just two ingredients: oil & pigment. Student-level oils may contain fillers and driers, so for the simplest ingredient list look to the more expensive paints. (Just as is often the case with prepared food in the supermarket.)
A consideration for toxicity to yourself and the environment would be the pigment in the paint. If you avoid the heavy metals like cobalt, cadmium, chrome and lead colours, you will have a non-toxic palette that will not pollute your groundwater and weren’t a danger to the people mining them. Paints that are priced in series 1 and 2 are usually safer pigments.
Another non-plastic, eco-friendly binder would be egg yolk – egg tempera has a beautiful matt surface and doesn’t have the longer drying time of oil paint. It is water-resistant and can be used as an underpainting for oil paint.
If you don’t need it to be water-resistant then you could use watercolour or gouache which both use a tree gum for the binder. If you want to paint with a hot paint you could try encaustic where the pigment is mixed with beeswax and is applied warm – it dries quickly, as soon as it cools.
Another thing to consider is what hazardous products you would need to use with the paint to make it work well. Oil paint can be used without solvents – many oil painters have non-toxic studio set-ups and thin their paints only with oil or use water-soluble oils. There are less toxic solvents like Spike Lavender. Egg tempera and watercolour both use water as the solvent. Encaustic uses heat.
A final thought-
The negative environmental impact of painting with plastic is very small compared to the amount of plastic in your shampoo, washing up and milk bottles, for instance. The amount of toxic pigments you dispose of when painting is tiny compared to the amount of heavy metals leached out from batteries that were put in the bin, for instance. So you could make a bigger difference by focussing on those things that are making a bigger negative impact.
That said, it could be a lovely, mindful part of your practice to knowingly use nothing that was harmful to yourself or the environment.
What a thoughtful and informative
reply. Thank you so much. I really
enjoyed reading this. 🙂
Thanks, Frankie
I’m glad you found it useful!
Thanks for this detailed and well-
considered answer. As someone else
commented, it was a pleasure to read.
Hi Erin.
Thanks, I’m glad you liked it!
Hi Julie, Would you recommend using linen
primed for oil or for acrylic paint if using
Flashe?
Hi David
No, you should not use Flashe (or acrylic) on an oil primed canvas. There may be beading up and a lack of adhesion because an oil primed surface is oil paint. And Flashe is a water-based paint that in this respect should be treated in the same way that you would treat acrylic.
Hi,
Can I use these paints in painting reborn
dolls?
Thank you so much.
Hi Ana
These paints are very opaque and similar to acrylics.
I know that most painters of reborn dolls like to use transparent oil colours. The preferred brand is Genesis Heat set Oils.
Hi Julie,
I used to paint with acrylic a few years ago. At that time I had no money to buy only premium grade paints, so I had kind of an heterogeneous collection, and maybe bad brushes. I have quite bad memories about dry painting, not stretching well and drying too fast, making me sometimes unable to get good fluidity for small details – but not always. Now I am considering getting back to it, with new paint/brushes. I had good experience with liquitex heavy body in the past, so I considered it. But due to my “bad stretching paint” memory, and as I am not looking for oil like textures or marked brush strikes especially, I thought liquitex soft body may be more pleasant. But then I found out about those flash colors. What I like is that for an excellent quality and a lot of magnificent colors, it is 2 times cheaper than the liquitex soft body paint. It seems fluid and very pleasant to use. It seems to correspond what I am looking for. But what I am worried about is that in the few examples that I found, including the one of Paula Nahmod you gave above, I only see uses where colors are quite raw and flat, with no gradients, nor visual texture. Is this because it is not adapted for a use where you would want to produce small details and subtle shadows/colors, or is this just because there are too few examples on line?
What do you think about my dilema in general? is there a more versatile type of paint I should use to match various uses?
Regards,
Hi Marwan
If I understand – by “stretching paint” you mean making the paint flow and go farther.
The Flash vinyl paints and the acrylic gouache paints are similar in that they are very opaque, like for graphic design posters or flat areas of underpainting for oil paintings. It doesn’t sound like that is what you are looking for.
If you want something to go on in a more flowing way but want to be able to get transparent areas to give you a more natural gradient then a soft body paint sounds like a good choice. Or a Fluid acrylic which has a similar viscosity to creamy pancake batter. There are 4 thickness of acrylic, though there is variation within the groupings. Soft Body and Fluid are in the middle. Heavy Body and Acrylic Inks are the extremes. This article might be helpful THE FOUR VISCOSITIES OF ACRYLIC PAINT.
These 3 makes of acrylic are in this soft to fluid middle area that might be what you are looking for.
Golden Fluid
Liquitex Soft Body
AV Fluid
Another thing to realise is that a soft body/fluid acrylic is not a watered-down version of a heavy body acrylic. They have the same amount of pigment and will stretch the same amount, the thick stuff just has thickeners added.
Your other concern was drying time.
You can do a few things.
Use a stay-wet palette system (homemade of ready-made), something to keep your paints wet for later and for tea breaks. It will have some sort of airtight cover and a place for a wet sponge or similar to keep the inside humid. Using this along with getting into the habit of spraying your palette with water every 5 minutes, putting your brushes in water every 5 minutes, etc. will make a workable acrylic painting experience. Read this article for more info THE ADVANTAGES OF USING AN ACRYLIC PALETTE WITH LID
If your problem is the paints drying too fast on the canvas then you can add a drop of retarder to your paint. Read the instructions carefully, using more than a tiny amount means they will never dry and will always be sticky like honey. Or you can use an open acrylic, which has retarders in and some other things that make them dry differently so they can be re-wetted for a little while: Golden Open and Atelier Interactive.
This article might help UNLOCK NEW PAINTING POSSIBILITIES WITH ATELIER INTERACTIVE ACRYLICS
I hope that helps.
Marwan, l have heard they have
discontinued liquitex. I heard lt not ln
the store. Im not for sure but l have
Heard several painter say they cant find
any.
Hi Sherry
I contacted Liquitex and they assured me they are still in business, the brand is still going strong, they are not being discontinued. Or do you mean that the brand is discontinuing it’s Soft Body range?
Liquitex asked me to clarify for them and to please give the location where your friends can’t get Liquitex anymore and if it’s a particular range of Liquitex. They are quite concerned. Thanks for your help with this.
Is it safe to wash down the drain
and not cause a blockage?
Thank you
The Flashe paints are very similar to acrylic. The rinse water from your brushes and palette will not clog the drains.
Hi Julie,
Thanks for your reply.
I have a genesis heat set oils, but it needs
oven. Do you recommend to use flashe or
any type of acrylic paints?
Thanks a lot
Hi Ana
It will not give the same result.
Genesis does not need an oven. Most people use a heat gun.
We sell one in our Genesis Department.
Hi Julie,
I’ve been using Flashe paint on canvas the
last few months and sometimes find that
there are ridges in the paint, when painting
I’m very careful but the ridges keep
appearing once dry. Can you recommend any
method to lessen the ridges so the paint can
be extremely flat? I’m using gesso’d canvas
and sometimes raw canvas. Thank you!
Hi Benjamin
Do you mean brushmarks?
Using a soft brush at a flat angle helps reduce brushmarks and sometimes a final brushing with a light touch to smooth things out. If you aren’t seeing them until it’s dry maybe you could try holding the painting up to the light at an angle to see them before, so you could brush them out. Depending on how you are painting, you could try a palette knife which leaves no brushmarks.
Hi Julie, is it possible to use flashe with
acryla gouace?
Hi Gabriela
Acryla gouache is acrylic paint and there are many reports that Flashe mixes well with acrylics and acrylic mediums, with the exception of a few colours that may “curdle”. So almost all colours work fine and you will know right away if they do not combine smoothly.
Can one use an acrylic “Retarder” to slow the
drying time of Flashe Paint?
Hi Mary
I don’t know if they are compatible.
I have emailed them to ask and will get back to you.
Hi Mary
The technical team at Lefranc have answered that yes, you can use all acrylic mediums with Flashe paints.
Hi Julie,
Would it be alright to paint with flashe over
oil sticks as opposed to just using it for
underpainting?
Although Flashe is a vinyl paint it has similar properties to acrylic and cannot be painted on top of oil paint.
Hi Julie,
Would Flashe paint work with cold wax
mediums. If I understand what you have
written, I could use it in underpainting?
Hi. Yes, you can use it just like acrylics for an underpainting for all oil painting techniques including cold wax.
Have used Flashe for a long while. But I
wouldn’t be using it, or acrylics for that
matter, on canvas. I make acrylic gessoed
panels to the size needed. Have never had
any problem with the Flashe being opaque
– but for shadowed area best to use some
sort of hatching. And more of an Egg
Tempera approach maybe. If you want flat
finish these are the best ready made ones.
Lascaux also good, but different to use and
have more transparent and translucent
colours. Golden used to make Matte finish
but don’t think they do now, not sure. I’d
say Golden were probably the best – but all
very good. For a flat or flattish finish either
Flashe or Lascaux nowadays. Good for
reproduction too.
Thanks for your tips on using the Flashe paints!
Hi!
I love this finish of Flashe, but have one
problem. Fingerprints remain on this
velvet finish (even with dry and clean
hands). That is, you need to be very
careful and not touch the finished
picture. And also it cannot be wiped and
dusted off, such as from an oil painting.
this makes me sad. And I don’t want to
overcoat because it loses that gorgeous
velvety finish (even with Flashe’s Matte
Lacquer)
I have emailed the makers of the Flashe paints to ask about this. I will get back to you with their reply.
Hi I am wonder if Flashe is comparable with
Novocolor from CA, USA which also dries
matte?
Hi Louis
Flash is similar to a very matte acrylic, it’s just made with a slightly different binder, vinyl.
Thank you for the excellent article.
My experience with Flashe has been excellent. A few observations:
The opaqueness varies by color. Each jar has a small code on the label that will tell you the degree of opacity.
The matte finish cannot be beat. The colors are rich and dry in a way that cannot be achieved with acrylics.
I do find some change in color from wet to dry. For example, with green I notice when wet it looks slightly more yellow and when dry slightly cooler.
I find Flashe more subject to abrasion than acrylic. A slight brushing of something hard (like a fingernail) will not scratch acrylic but will leave a noticeable mark on a Flashe surface. I have learned to take extra care when handling my Flashe paintings.
Thanks for the tips Mark! Helpful info.