Robie is always looking for opportunities to learn more and get better at her craft. After she acquires a new concept or a skill, she enjoys sharing it with others, in the hope that it will help beginners.
Acrylic Painting for Beginners Step by Step
This Acrylic Painting for Beginners Tutorial is great for novices who may have never picked up a brush before and for intermediate level artists who want to try out acrylics for the first time.
Do you want to create your original acrylic artwork but you are not sure where to start?
Acrylic paint is probably the easiest medium to tackle for beginner painters and the fact that you can paint over and change things several times without creating mud, makes it much lower stress that other media, like alcohol inks or printmaking.
Also acrylic painting with a brush is very controllable and allows painters to create more realistic pieces than they may otherwise with acrylic pouring or resin art. By learning basic acrylic painting techniques you can also expand your pouring work with embellishments to give it a little more structure and composition.
In This Article
We’ll start by describing the tools you need to be successful, including what paint, supplies, and supports to buy. There will be a lot of precious tips and questions answered and plenty of resources on where to find more information.
Then we’ll dig into a step-by-step painting exercise to get comfortable using the paint.
By following along with the tutorial, you will learn how to get started painting in acrylics and you will be able to complete a painting while learning many skills that will serve you well in your future painting adventures.
This tutorial covers many of the key info you need to know about painting with acrylics including:
- The unique characteristics of acrylic paint
- The 7 must-have painting supplies
- Some optional supplies that are good to have handy
- Which acrylic paints to buy
- Colors you need to create a limited color palette that is great for any painting
Plus, the article is full of info about how to paint including:
- A step-by-step painting that you can follow along
- What kind of brushes to get
- The correct use of values in painting
- How to further develop your acrylic painting skills
- And more
All right, let’s get started!
The Unique Characteristics of Acrylic Paint
Acrylics are an awesome painting medium for beginners and professionals alike because they are water-based, do not smell, come in all kinds of colors and thicknesses, and they dry very quickly allowing easy correction of “mistakes.”
Heavy body acrylics handle similar to oils but being water-based they are easier to work with and to clean up. Unlike watercolors, undiluted acrylics are pretty opaque and make easy to paint in layers and cover mistakes.
Acrylic paint is made of pigments in a polymer emulsion, simply put it’s a colorful plastic. All paints, gels, mediums, and varnishes are basically the same polymer plastic substance, but with different weights, viscosity and thicknesses. This is why they are all compatible.
Things to consider when buying acrylic paint – all info is on the tubes. The different types can be mixed and combined.
Consistency
- Heavy Body
- Soft Body
- Fluid
- Ultra Fluid
Format
- Tube/bottle
- Bottle w/pipette dropper
- Marker
- Spray Can
Color
- Pigment type
- Lightfastness
- Strength
Coverage/Opacity
- Opaque
- Hue
- Semi-opaque
- Transparent
Acrylic Paint Color Mixing
Learning to mix paints properly (or in whichever way works best for your style and preferences) is an incredibly important acrylic painting technique. I am not going to get into color theory in this post, however there are still some important tips and techniques to consider when it comes to mixing your colors.
- Use a color wheel as a color mixing guide. If you don’t yet know which colors mix to make other colors, a color wheel is an inexpensive and amazing tool to keep handy. Even better – make your own color wheel using paints you have mixed yourself for great practice. Many artists even keep detailed notes and paint swatches of colors they’ve mixed and want to return to in future paintings.
- If you don’t have a lot of color mixing confidence or experience, mixing your own acrylic paint colors from only primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) can be time-consuming and lead to dispensing more paint than you needed. It can take some trial and error – a little bit of this, a little more of that – to get your desired colors. To save time and paint, you may prefer to use a variety of pre-mixed colors from tubes or bottles. I have found certain colors I just can’t mix right, so I always buy them pre-mixed!
- Alla Prima (wet on wet) is an approach that involves applying large amounts of wet pigment onto the canvas surface quickly before any drying occurs. This process allows you to mix paint and develop colors directly on the canvas. It is a less precise approach than mixing paint colors on a separate palette before painting, but it can be a lot of fun and very expressive!
Acrylic Painting Techniques With a Paintbrush
Using a paintbrush with acrylics is the most traditional method of painting. But within this toolset, there are an almost infinite number of paintbrush techniques you can use in your painting. Paint brushes come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and materials, so the brushes you choose will also impact the results of the painting technique you use. There are big brushes, fine point brushes, soft bristles and firm, stiff bristles, flat and round brushes. Some brushes absorb and hold a lot of paint while some brushes don’t.
For beginners, I recommend purchasing an inexpensive set of paintbrushes with a variety of shapes and sizes so you can experiment with them. Many artists do end up with favorites (I prefer fat, soft, round brushes most of the time), but depending on the type of painting you do, you may find several that you prefer for various techniques.
In addition to choosing your preferred paintbrushes for the job, you can also experiment with different paintbrush techniques.
- Dry brushing – Dry brushing with acrylic paint is a method that involves adding a small amount of paint to the brush, but removing any excess. When you dry brush on canvas, it goes on in thin layers, sometimes transparent, that show the brush strokes. This is a helpful technique to create the appearance of textures like fur, hair, grass, or woodgrain.
- Wet brush on dry canvas – This is probably the most traditional paint brush technique. Wet your brush with water before dipping it in your paint, and use as much paint as you like on the brush. The wet brush helps ensure a smoother, more even application of paint.
- Wet on Wet – As mentioned in the color mixing section, wet on wet or alla prima involves applying a wet brush with paint to wet paint on the canvas. This allows you to blend colors directly on the canvas, and will likely show a lot of your brushstrokes as the two wet paints mix.
- Stippling – Stippling (or pointillism) is a method that uses paint on the very tip of the brush (usually a pointed or round brush) and is lightly dabbed on the canvas in repetition to create a series of dots or circles. How close or how far apart each dot is and to what frequency helps build intensity of the paint color you are using, and can create an impressionistic effect.
Impasto Technique
This is a method of painting in which you can use a palette knife to apply paint, creating texture and an impression of dimension. With the impasto technique, you apply with thick, concentrated paint in the form of dabs and globs, rather than strokes like you would with a paintbrush. You would most likely use a heavy body paint or mix a heavy gel medium with your paint to thicken it so it maintains the texture you create with the palette knife until it dries. While it is not a very precise way to paint, it is a great way to create unique textures, movement and dimension into your composition.
Glazing is a painting technique used to add subtle, translucent color to a painting. By mixing a small amount of glazing medium with your acrylic paint color, you can increase the transparency of the paint without losing the fluid consistency. While you can thin your acrylic paints a bit with water, water causes the paint particles to separate so it loses the smooth consistency. Water-thinned paint works well for washes of color in which you don’t require a lot of control, but if you want more precise thinning of your paint, use a glazing medium. Once the glaze is mixed, you can begin adding the more translucent color to the areas of your painting that you wish to enhance. It works great for improving shading in an area that the paint is already dry so the paints no longer blend, or adding tone to an area that’s already dry. As with any painting medium, follow the mixing instructions on the label for best results.
Acrylic Pouring
This is a great way to create abstract art, especially if you are just getting started and enjoy getting a little messy. You can choose any colors you want, but it’s important that they are all the same type of paint and medium. You will need:
- Acrylic paint – any colors your heart desires
- Pouring medium
- A tray to catch the drippy paint when it runs off the canvas
To begin, mix your acrylic paints and pouring medium (according to the instructions on the pouring medium) in a container. Disposable plastic cups work just fine for this.You can begin pouring and dripping various lines onto the canvas, tilting the canvas gently to allow the paints to flow and cover the surface. You might use other tools to add movement to the swirls of paint, such as a toothpick, or blow dryer. Acrylic pouring creates one of a kind marbled looking abstract paintings that are fun and approachable for painters of all ages and skill levels.
