Being a near-complete convert to hobby acrylics, I haven't had as much experience with mixing media as some other Forum members. I've fooled around with artist acrylics a little; I have to say I haven't been impressed with them as paints for plastic. In my experience they don't cover as uniformly as the paints that are made for the purpose. I have, however, used them quite a bit on other materials, such as paper for flags. And I've done a couple of carved wood "sea" bases for small-scale warships. For that purpose I found that artist acrylics gave a nice, deep, water-like look, which was enhanced considerably by a couple of coats of gloss acrylic varnish. That's about the only use I normally have for glossy finishes.
On my little model of the pilot boat Phantom ( http://gallery.drydockmodels.com/phantom ) I wanted a little bit of a sheen on the hull, to represent gloss paint without spoiling the scale effect. (That's easy to do with gloss finishes.) I painted it with PolyScale black (with a hint of dark blue mixed in), let it dry for several weeks, and then gave it a thin coat of Renaissance brand microcrystalline wax. (That's a high-quality, colorless wax that's made for museum artifacts; it comes in handy for all sorts of things.) I'm pretty happy with the result.
House paint dealers say it's ok to put latex wall paint over solvent-based paint, but not to do it the other way around. The solvent-based paint supposedly has an inclination to eat the more benign latex. I've seen it happen in the case of wall paint. I did have a bad experience once when I painted a formica-covered desk top. Strictly in accordance with the paint man's recommendation, I gave it two coats of solvent-based white primer and then rolled on a finish coat of blue latex. Disaster. A couple of hours later the latex had dried - with thousands of little white lines, like cracks, where the primer was showing through. It took three more finish coats to get an acceptable result.
Hobby paints don't seem to be so sensitive. Personally, I've sprayed a couple of model aircraft with flat enamel and brush-painted with acrylics on top of it; that seemed to work fine. The acrylic showed no inclination whatever to soften up the enamel beneath, and goofs could be fixed with water. I've always been leery of putting enamel washes on top of acrylic, but I've seen references to that technique in several FSM articles - and it seemed to produce no ill effects. The bottom line seems to be that modern hobby paints are so good that it's pretty hard to screw things up with them.
Regarding small-scale rigging fittings - there are no rules about this stuff. It's all up to the individual modeler. That said, I think the Revell Charles W. Morgan is on somewhere near 3/32"=1' scale. That's just about big enough to rig with the smallest commerically-available blocks (e.g., those from Bluejacket) - IF you want to go that route. The Seeadler kit, as I recall, is on a considerably smaller scale.
The "glue blob = block" approach is a very old one, and can be quite effective if done carefully. Donald McNarry, whom I regard as one of the best ship modelers in the world, works on scales from 1/16"=1' downward, and I have the impression that he usually makes his blocks like that. A slight variation is to use Titebond "Dark Wood" glue. It's brown in color, and has more body to it than white glue; after it's dried a few minutes it can be shaped (with a toothpick or something similar) into a pretty convincing block-like shape. I'd recommend touching the dried "block" with flat brown or black paint; the "block" will be brown, but pretty shiny.
In any work of this sort it's preferable to err on the small side. Oversized blocks can wreck the appearance of a finished model - but nobody's likely to complain if they're too small.
I feel obliged to make one observation about that Revell Seeadler kit. If you don't want to hear bad news - stop reading here.
The kit is a slightly-modified reissue of the same company's Coast Guard training barque Eagle. I haven't seen the Seeadler kit in many years, but as I recall the only changes are the addition of yards to the mizzen mast (to convert the rig from barque to ship), the deletion of the eagle figurehead, and maybe some changes to the ship's boats. I've never seen any good photos or plans of the actual Seeadler, but I don't think she looked much like the kit. As a matter of fact it sticks in my mind that she was made of wood. I could well be wrong about that, but if I'm not the rivets and plating joints on the hull parts obviously are bogus. And in any case, the Seeadler was a converted merchantman, built sometime prior to 1914. The Eagle is a sail training ship built (in Germany, with the original name Horst Wessel) in the 1930s. And that's what she looks like. (A cargo-carrying sailing ship would not, for instance, have big portholes in the hull at lower deck level. The Eagle (and the Revell Seeadler) have rows of such ports. In the real ship they provide light and ventilation to the cadet living spaces.)
Revell was notorious for pulling marketing stunts like that. The worst one, perhaps, was the boxing of a modified version of H.M.S. Bounty as H.M.S. Beagle - a vessel that, in reality, resembled the Bounty only in having a hull, a deck, and three masts. That monstrosity, unfortunately, has resurfaced recently courtesy of Revell Germany. I suspect the people currently in charge of the company have no idea how utterly spurious the kit is.
The Morgan, on the other hand, is a beautiful kit - one of the best Revell ever made, in my opinion. I just wish they hadn't skimped on the whaleboats. The hulls, as I remember, are beautifully done, but only two of them have interiors. The bare insides of the others are fine for the two boats that are stowed on the deckhouse roof, but not for the ones on the davits. As I recall, Revell provided vac-formed "covers" for them. No way! A whaleboat had to be ready for lowering at a moment's notice, and in view of all the gear inside it would have been impossible to put a cover on it.
Otherwise, if my recollection of it is correct, it's a first-rate kit and a fine basis for a scale model.