How To Start Painting With Acrylics: A Simple Guide For Beginners.

Soma Datta Author

A quick guide to help you get started on your acrylic painting journey, whether you're an absolute beginner or keen to try out this medium.

Acrylics are a great medium for beginner painters. They're easy to use and offer a wide range of techniques, styles and subjects. This guide will help you get started on your acrylic painting journey, whether you're an absolute beginner or a seasoned painter keen to try a new medium.

What paints you'll need

You will need a basic color palette of acrylic paints such as Red, Yellow, Blue, White and Black to get started. There are many different brands in the market. Buy the best you can in your budget.

If you want to learn how to use just 5 colours to create a myriad of shades then you will find my 'colour mixing course for absolute beginners' an easy way to learn about color-mixing without the need to memorise complex theories.

Here are a few of my recommendations where most of the brands include student as well as professional grades of paint.

- Golden Acrylics (includes student and professional range with plenty of pigment varieties to choose)

-Liquitex Acrylics (includes student as well as professional range with plenty of pigment varieties to choose)

-Holbein Acrylics (includes student and professional grade choices)

-Chromacryl paints (budget paints for students but pigment intensity is good enough for hobbyists)

-Jo Sonja's Acrylics (meant for folk art but great pigment intensity for beginners)

Choosing a palette

You need a palette with larger mixing area and preferably made of non-porous materials such as plastic, melamine or glass. Glazed ceramics are fine too like shown below.

You could purchase premade palettes designed for acrylic paints. Alternatively, you could go green and use old melamine plates or Tupperware lids. Remember all you need is a large surface area to mix colors.

I use plastic lids that I collected from my baby's from formula tins. But plastic lids from take-away containers work just the same.

What brushes to use

Brushes for acrylic paints are stiffer than those used for watercolor. Also, synthetic brushes or taklon ones are best for painting with acrylics.

So be mindful of this aspect if choosing to buy brushes from yard sales or second-hand art supplies.

I usually use an assortment of 

1. flats for numerous subjects like waterfalls, details and quickly filling up large sections of painting, 
2. rounds including pointy ones for details, 
3. a few different sizes of fan brushes for subjects like waves, foliage, grass and fur, 
4. a few filbert brushes for painting folk art and abstract flowers,
5. some large sizes of flat brushes such as a 3/4" one and a 1" one for painting backgrounds and large areas. 

I also have a few palette knives which I use to add special textures and effects to my paintings. However, if you're a beginner then it’s best to just use brushes at first. Then once you have familiarised yourself with the medium, you can experiment with palette knives.

Surface to paint

What you will also need is a surface to paint on. If short on storage space, then consider using pre-cut canvas sheets available in canvas pad format. You could also paint on sealed mdf boards or plywood. If storage is not an issue, then a few white canvases of various sizes and shapes will give you enough variety to try out different styles and subjects to paint. 

Acrylics can also be used on variety of porous surfaces such as rocks and terracotta pots. It's a wonderful medium to experiment and you are only limited by your imagination! 

How to start painting

The following is just one of the ways to familiarise yourself of the subject. You can simply sketch the following using drawing pencils on paper or paint a small loose painting. The idea is to identify an easy path to the complete painting while capturing its essence effectively.

Step 1: Find a reference picture you'd like to paint. Observe the details. Is there a lot of fine detail? Or is it bolder and more impressionistic?

Step 2: Observe the tonal values. Which areas have most intense shadows? What's the color of the shadows? How about the brightest brights? What's the color of those?

Step 3: Observe how things are arranged in space. Are there objects, people or animals looking out at you from the distance.

Step 4: Start with a quick understudy where you paint a loose and simplified version of the reference picture. Ensure you depict the key elements that give context to the subject and define the subject itself. Most importantly don't forget to paint in the shadows and highlights.

Eliminate any elements that’ll help with composition and adding more emphasis to the subjects.

Step 5: You will uncover through this exercise the most important parts of the scene and about effectively capturing the essence of the subject.

Step 6: Once the understudy is complete, use it to paint the final version of the reference picture drawing from what you have learnt from the understudy exercise.

Would you like yo skip these steps and just have a go? Then read on as there's a free gift for you!

The biggest thing you need when starting painting is the motivation to keep going. But don't worry! It gets easier with practice.

Do you want to try out an easy tutorial to jumpstart your creative journey with acrylics? Then try out my free course on 'How to paint a koi fish with cherry blossoms' at the link below.

FREE ACRYLIC PAINT-ALONG WORKSHOP

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Categories: : learntopaint, Tips and techniques