 Morning class. I'm Will Kemp from Will Kemp Art School and this week we're going to look at different whites you can use in your acrylic painting and which is the best white to choose. Often if you use a white that isn't opaque enough, then it can cause real troubles when you're trying to block out different areas of your painting. So let's have a look at different ones in different price ranges and see which one's going to be the best for you. So the first paint I've got is this one. This is the cheapest paint that I could find. This was about £1.50 on an offer from a local craft store. And then I've got here an example of a student quality titanium white and this is from Windsor & Newton. And then I've got a few different examples of artist quality titanium white. I've got one from Dayler Rowney. I've got another Windsor & Newton artist acrylic. And a golden titanium white. I've also got two other paints. One which is a golden open titanium white. And I've also got a zinc white. And we'll talk about zinc white a bit later on. So the first thing I'm going to do is just pour out examples of the different whites so you can start to see how their consistency varies. So this is the first white. This is the craft white. And one thing that you'll notice when you use craft acrylic paints is they've got a real smell to them. They're quite strong and that's because they've got a lot of different additives that have been added into them. You'll find with artist quality paints, they don't really have much of an odour at all. So let's now have a look at them on the easel so we can start to see the different consistencies between the paints. So here you can already start to see the difference in consistency of the titanium whites. So this is on the very far left, the one from the craft store, and you'll see how it's just already dropping down onto the palette. And it's quite thin when it's quite easy for my palette knife to go through it. Then this is the Galleria, which is the student quality titanium white. It's a bit thicker, but it's still starting to move down the palette. And then these are the three artist quality titanium whites, and they're all holding their shapes really well. They're not moving down at all and they're all in these kind of exactly the same shape when I first put them out. So this one here is the Daler Rowney, and that's got a really nice stiffness to it. This is the Windsor and Newton. It's not as stiff, but it's still it's got a nice consistency to it and this is the Heavy Body from Golden, and that's the the thickest of the lot because of the Heavy Body. It's a little bit thicker and a bit stiffer. And this particular titanium white is towards the bottom of the pot that I've been using. So it's probably a tiny little bit thicker than you'd normally get from a fresh tube. The one that I haven't put out is the Open Titanium White. So just to show you that. And you can see here, this is some of the issues that I have with the Open acrylic from Golden, is that they're artist quality paints, but look at the difference in the consistency. So this is still the titanium white, but it's so much more translucent, so much more of a looser bodied paint, and it's coming down the palette, almost the same as these first couple of paints here. So that's just something to bear in mind if you're looking at the open range. The titanium white is a lot looser and a lot thinner than the standard acrylic titanium white. So we can now just test just with the brush to see how they cover over black. So you can see on here that the first one, the craft paint, didn't really cover it over that much at all. The second one, the Galleria paint, that starts to cover over quite well. The Daler-Rowney one covered it over really well. It's a little bit thicker that, but it worked really well there. This was the Winsor & Newton artist quality, and that's about the same as the Golden artist acrylic here. The Open and the acrylic again is about the same as the Galleria acrylic, the student grade there. So let's just try with a palette knife with thicker applications. So what's interesting to note here is how when you're applying them thickly with a palette knife, they've got similar coverage. They still all cover the white underneath it, and that's applying it reasonably thickly, but they can all cover over whatever you've got. Now let's have a look at the different tinting strength of the whites. So what I've done here is laid out about the equal amount of the titanium white to some Phthalo Blue with a green shade. I'm just going to mix them together and start to see if we can see any differences between the finished tones that are mixed. So you can see that the two end ones are the slightly darkest and the ones in the middle are all slightly lighter. You'll also find that with this one, the Kraft Titanium White, it's got a real gloss finish to it, whereas the others have got more of a satin or a matte finish to them. And that's just due to the different fillers that have been put into this Titanium White. Just seeing how they're drying off. And they've each got a very, very slight different hue to them due to the different white that's been used. So the final white I've put out here is just the Zinc White. And just to show you the difference with Zinc White. So Zinc White is a lot more transparent white. It isn't as solid as the Titanium White. So what you'll find with it is what called a mixing white. So if you've got, you know, some blue and you just want to lighten it up slightly but still retain a lot of body into the paint, you can just add in some Zinc White and it will just change it ever so slightly. If you're doing the same thing with Titanium White, you can start to see that the hue can be changed a lot more rapidly with Titanium White. To get to the same hue with the Zinc White, we're going to have to add quite a lot more, even a bit more. You've really got to keep on adding that Zinc if you want to try and lighten it up to the same level. I might even say a bit more. Oops. So that's looking quite close in hue. But if you just look at the difference in volume of paint. So you need loads more of the Zinc White to get the same level of the Titanium White if you're trying to lift up the value. So make your colors a lot lighter. But if you're trying to subtly lift the color, then Zinc White can be very, very handy because it can just shift it ever so slightly. So now what's interesting to note is the whites are actually drying off a lot more. It's the first one, the craft white. You can see how it's drying off here and notice what's called the color shift. And this is a shift from when it's wet to when it's dry. And you'll see here the color there is a lot darker than when it's wet. And that's because often you'll find with the cheaper quality whites is that they have a greater color shift. So you can paint it onto your canvas and look perfect. And you come back when it's dry and it's shifted a lot darker. This is with the Daler Rowney. That's dried there, but this is still wet. But the actual shifting color is quite close. And again, with the Windsor & Newton, that's nearly dry there and that's wet at the top. So you can see very, very subtly there. There's a very slight darkening off. It shouldn't be as much with the Windsor & Newton because they use a clear binder rather than a white binder, which is usually used. And again, with the Golden Acrylic. That's dry down here. It's just going off there, but you can see they're very, very close in color. This because of the open acrylic will still be wet and will still stay wet for quite a while. So if you have the very cheapest white you can find, sometimes it's a lot harder to cover over that painting that you're working on top of. And also you have to be aware of the color shift that will happen with the white. When you start to go into artist brands, so Windsor & Newton or Daler Rowney or Liquidex, then you'll start to find that there's more consistency in the actual paint between the students and the artist quality. I mean, this one here, the Galleria is done really well in comparison to some of the artist quality paints. But the one thing you'll still notice a difference is is in the actual consistency of the paint. The paint is a lot thinner when you're actually first working with it. If you want something that's got a real heavy body to it and something that's going to hold the actual shapes of your brush. So if I do a mark here, you see how it holds the shapes. Whereas with this one, it kind of smooths it out more than using an artist quality titanium white is always going to be a real benefit to your acrylic paintings. And then when you want to have subtle mixes, you can use a zinc white to get these lovely translucent mixes that could be so effective when you're using very subtle shifts in tone such as portraiture. This is Wilkham from Wilkham Art School.