Acrylic Painting Tips for Beginners
When you first start painting with acrylic, it can feel a little tricky. In this post I’ll share some of my top tips for beginners to help make your acrylic painting process more fun and smooth! If you’ve ever felt frustrated with chalky paint, muddy mixed colors, unwanted streaks, and see-through acrylics, this post is here to help! You’ll also get some bonus acrylic painting ideas at the end if you’re in a creative funk!
Ready to learn my favorite acrylic painting tips? Let’s dive in!
Use heavy-body acrylic paint
Many new artists start their acrylic painting journey with the small tubes of craft acrylic paint that can be found at most art stores. This is great if you’re just getting started, but depending on the quality of the craft paint, you might find that your paintings feel a bit chalky and streaky. To fix this, I recommend using heavy-body acrylic paint. My favorite brand is Liquitex. Heavy-body paint is much thicker and easier to work with in my experience. I recommend experimenting with this if you haven’t had a chance to!
Add water to help the paint glide
Another common struggle for acrylic painting beginners is finding the right paint consistency to get the paint to glide smoothly across the canvas. Acrylic paint is water-based, meaning it can be diluted with water without breaking down the structure of the paint.
If you add a tiny bit of water to your heavy-body acrylic paint, you’ll find that it slides over the canvas much more smoothly. This also helps to achieve a more flat consistency if that’s what you’re going for. Experiment with different amounts of water on your brush to find the perfect balance!
How to make acrylic paint more opaque
There are some acrylic paint colors that are less opaque than others. Many paint manufacturers state the “lightfastness” of the different colors they offer right on the tube. This tells you how opaque the paint will be.
In the example above, the lightfastness is indicated on the paint tube by the black square. If the paint is semi-transparent this box will be filled halfway. If it is very transparent, the square box will just be an outline rather than filled in with black!
Lighter colors like yellow tend to be less opaque, but it always depends on the brand and the color you’re using. If you find that you’re struggling with see-through paint, I have a blog post full of tips to help you achieve a more opaque look with your acrylic paint. My number one tip? Mix in a little bit of white paint to bump up the opacity!
You can check out the rest of the tips about how to make acrylic paint more opaque here.
Understanding your paint drying times
Acrylic paint inherently dries faster than other materials like oil paint. I think this is a huge benefit because I’m able to paint more intuitively and don’t have to wait around for hours for my layers to dry. But I know that some artists prefer their paint to stay wet longer so that they can achieve unique blends. If you want to keep your acrylics from drying out as quickly you can add a little gel medium to the paint to give it a slower drying time.
On the flip side, you can also get your paint to dry faster with techniques like using a hair dryer and painting thinner layers. I share more about that in this blog post!
Master color mixing
If you know me, you know I’m a color lover! My paintings are vibrant and energetic, and I need unique colors to match. Using paint straight out of the tube is great, but the real magic begins when you learn how to master color mixing and create beautiful colors on your own!
When I first started painting, I was frustrated when I mixed colors and they looked dull and muddy. But over the years I’ve found some go-to colors that result in vibrant color mixes every time. Check out this post to learn how to mix vibrant colors with acrylic paint!
Bonus tip! Acrylic painting ideas
Not sure where to start? Check out this post where I share five acrylic painting ideas to help spark your creativity!
I hope these tips were helpful! Let me know in the comments if you’d like me to go deeper into anything related to acrylic painting!
xo, Jessi
Want more abstract painting instruction? Join me in my abstract painting class, Joyful Abstracts, for an in-depth art class where I walk through my entire abstract painting process from start to finish. You’ll learn how to gather inspiration, how to sketch out your composition, what colors to choose, how to paint a balanced abstract, and how to varnish your painting so it will last a lifetime!
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