Acrylics: Atelier Free Flow Artists’ Acrylics (review)

When I went to the newly discovered art supply shop in my town, I saw that among their range of acrylics, they had the Atelier Free Flow Artists’ Acrylics. I already had a bottle of Carbon Black from somewhere (I think I got it as a free sample for sending away to a magazine or something) but not only had I never seen them in brick-and-mortar art supply stores, I’d never been able to find them online, either (though it seems recently a few other places have started stocking them). This always disappointed me since Chroma (the manufacturer) is an Australian brand and I like to support those where possible (I also use their Atelier Interactive acrylics). When I came across them, I decided to pick up a handful of extra colours to go with my Carbon Black.

Here’s the colour chart for my small selection of colours.

The most similar paints I know are the Jo Sonja’s acrylics (also made by Chroma, I believe, but targeted more at folk art painters) and Golden Fluid acrylics. I’ve not tried the Jo Sonja’s but I do quite like the Golden Fluid acrylics, though they are expensive for the quantity of paint you get. Atelier Free Flow acrylics range from $5.90 for series 1 colours to about $14 for series 5, but these are for 60ml bottles; on average, the 30ml bottles of Golden Fluid acrylics are a few dollars more expensive, meaning the Atelier Free Flow acrylics are far better value for money. You can also buy them in 250ml or 500ml bottles.

There are 35 colours in the range, with many being single-pigment colours. They are quite runny, so if you want to use acrylics in a thick, textured manner, these won’t be suitable for you. I find them quite useful for laying down backgrounds in paintings before switching to my thicker acrylics to paint the main subject or foreground objects. Most of the colours I bought are transparent or semi-transparent, but the opaque colours (like Yellow Ochre) provided pretty solid coverage, even with only a single layer. In terms of pigment concentration, I found them to be on par with Golden Fluid acrylics, as well as the thicker acrylics I have.

Here’s a painting I did with the Atelier Free Flow acrylics.

I would definitely recommend trying some of these if you want a more fluid acrylic as opposed to a stiffer-bodied tube acrylic. Unfortunately they do seem to be hard to find, so I’m guessing a lot of people will just go with Golden Fluid acrylics for convenience, but if you can get your hands on the Atelier Free Flow acrylics, they are excellent value for money.