my answer:
The dry, cheep color isn't relatively darker than a dry, higher quality paint, just the visual look of the color changes more drastically because as we know from our pigment-free acrylic mediums, acrylic is white when wet and clear when dry. So if a paint has a lot of pigment, that color swallows up the visual white of the acrylic (only so much mass can fit inside a tube), so therefore it's closer to the actual dry color. And when the pigment load is smaller, the white plays a stronger role in the appearance of the wet paint. So it makes it harder to gauge how a painting will actually look dry, the relationships between wet colors and dry colors, transparency, etc. Cheaper paints are across the board more transparent than good ones, which means streaky in a very bad way. (tip for life: If you are going to use bad paint, use really good brushes). This rant excludes latex paint and craft paint which both usually start with a titanium white base and then other pigment is added. The other day a friend asked me to look at his paintings and I said, "Your materials really aren't doing you justice." I couldn't get past it. Honestly, the quality of materials makes a huge difference to me as an art viewer. I mean, I'm all for using what you've got-what you find, and reusing, and appropriating, but when people use low quality paints it just says to me either, "I don't know what the heck I'm doing," or "I don't value my work enough to invest in it." There are lots of ways to use cheep paints with expensive paints to get the most out of both! Think about the cheap paint as filler. Use it to mix larger batches of color. Use a gloss medium in or over craft paint to give it a luxurious sheen rather than that spongey Apple Barrel hyper-matte.
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