Should you start with acrylics or watercolour? It is the question we are asked most often at Craft and Canvas, and it deserves a proper answer rather than a shrug. Both mediums are water-based and genuinely accessible for beginners — but they feel completely different to use, suit different subjects and working styles, and have very different learning curves. Acrylics are opaque, forgiving, and work on almost any surface; mistakes can be painted over and compositions can be changed mid-painting. Watercolour is transparent, luminous, and less forgiving — once a wash is down, it is largely there to stay — but it rewards observation, patience, and a willingness to work with what the paint does. In this guide we compare both mediums honestly across every dimension that matters to a beginner: opacity and transparency, drying time, surfaces, cost, subjects, and working personality. We also answer the most common questions about using both mediums together and choosing brushes. Read on, then come and find the full range in store or at craftandcanvas.co.uk.

Painting a convincing watercolour sky is one of those things that looks effortless when done well and hopelessly frustrating when it goes wrong. The secret — and it is not really a secret at all once someone explains it — is the wet-on-wet technique: applying wet paint to pre-wetted paper so that colours spread, blend, and feather naturally into each other without hard edges. It is the technique that gives watercolour skies their characteristic soft luminosity, and it is what separates a flat, overworked sky from one that looks alive. In this step-by-step guide we walk through the complete process for a simple blue sky with clouds, covering paper preparation, colour mixing, reading the sheen, adding cloud shadows, and the most important skill of all — knowing when to stop. We also cover how to adapt the approach for different conditions from stormy skies to sunsets, what to do when things go wrong, and which supplies we recommend from our range at Craft and Canvas. Read on, then find everything you need in store or at craftandcanvas.co.uk.

Most acrylic painters work with the same handful of mainstream brands — reliable, widely available, and perfectly good. Wallace Seymour is something different. Founded in 2011 by Rebecca Wallace and Pip Seymour — two practising artists with decades of experience in the art materials industry — this small British company makes acrylic paint in small batches with an almost obsessive commitment to pigment quality. Many of their pigments are sourced from original quarries and processed in-house. The colour range includes over 100 shades in 60ml tubes, among them historic earth colours and natural pigments you simply cannot buy from any mass-market brand. The paint itself has a soft gel consistency, a noticeably higher pigment load than most commercial acrylics, and dries slightly more slowly — giving more working time and a rich satin-gloss finish that rewards careful technique. In this post we give our honest, independent assessment of the range — what makes it special, how it compares to the brands you already know, and which colours are worth starting with. We also cover the full Wallace Seymour mediums range that we stock alongside the paints. Read on, then find the full selection in store or at craftandcanvas.co.uk.