Slow Dry Acrylics

I've been playing around with the relatively new "slow dry acrylics" by Golden. I almost always work in acrylic, and I figured it would be nice to have more "open time", so I motored over to the art supply store and bought a few tubes of this "new" product.

Now, I haven't spent a ton of time working with these, but....my findings so far are as follows...
1. Does it stay wet as long as oils? Noooooooooo. To be fair, it does stay wet on the palette for about a day. That's nice. You don't end up wasting a lot of paint. When actually painting, though, it stays wet for possibly 8 minutes. I work with thin layers of paint....so...it would probably stay wet longer if I was using really thick applications.
2. You can "reactivate" the paint after it has dried to the touch with either water or the product that you're supposed to use with this paint....and that was a hoot.
3. It made it much easier to blend areas together. Nice.

4. Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok...here is a tip. I work in very thin layers of paint. When working in acrylic (I usually use liquitex), I usually just use water to thin my paint down and "glaze". I did the same thing with the Open Acrylics....but....when I went to varnish the painting....the paint lifted and smudged all over the place....and some areas lifted completely. AHHHH!!! Ut oh. Sooo....I "fixed" that painting and then I tried the paints again, this time thinning them with a combination of water and matt medium (about 3:1). That time, I didn't have any problem with the paint lifting on me whilst varnishing.

Sooo....these paints seem fill a nice "niche" between acrylics and oils. Use them for more open time and better blending, but don't expect them to stay wet like oils or to move around like oils.