05 August 2018

Vintage Walter T. Foster Publication Celebrating The "New" Acrylics

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Very old how-to-draw publications find their way to Powell's, as I've shown before. This one here is an unexpected delight, and timely into the bargain.

This is the front cover of what appears to be a periodical, or at least an occasional series, called How and What To Paint. Charmingly cover-priced at the modest amount of thirty cents (at your art store). The publisher, that titan of how-to-do-art books, Walter T. Foster.


This, volume 5, concentrates on three main things: How to draw bears (hence the cover art), mixing colors, and an exciting new thing ... the versatile new plastic paints. What that is, of course, is acrylics; acrylic paint media is pigment emulsified in an acrylic polymer medium, and acrylic polymer is a type of thermoplastic.

When you're painting in acrylic, you're painting with plastic.

The number is undated, though an ade for a brand of mediums and varnishes on the back cover features an oil by Frederic Taubes dated 1964, so it certainly can't have been published before that, quite obviously. Given my recent excursion into the acrylic medium by way of PBN painting, finding this historic jewel is both timely and serendipitous.

The article only covers one spread (less ads) and here is what it looks like:


As exultant the article, penned by managing editor Dixi Hall, was, the charming ads really win. Brushes from Langnickel, and illustration board from Hi-Art, a brand of the National Mat, Card, and Board Co, which exhorts the reader to request free Hi-Art samples, so they may not be left behind when all the other fellow artists rave about it at the next art club meeting.

Truly, we have come so far.

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