Step by Step: How to use Acrylic Paints For Beginners & Newbies

Support Team
Jul 29, 2017
2 min read

Gather a handful of paintbrushes, a palette, and a cup of water and of course, acrylic paint. We use Applegreen Research Acrylic Paint Set.
Select a good location in a room with lots of natural light. This way, you’ll be able to see tiny details in your brush strokes and colors that you wouldn’t be able to pick out otherwise.
Lay out your canvas and supplies in a setting that would allow you to easily access all paints, water, and brushes.
Decide on your subject. A couple easy ones for beginners include: a bowl of fruit. vase of flowers, or a sunrise/sunset.
Create a rough sketch of your subject. Use a regular pencil to roughly sketch the outline of major shapes onto your canvas, and don’t worry about details or shading too much.
Find your light source. This is important because color changes depending on the way light hits it. Colors nearer to the light source are lighter, and the ones further away are darker.
Now that you are ready to begin painting, you can mix your paints to get the exact shade you want. You can do this two ways: mix on a palette or if you are feeling adventurous, layer/mix paints straight on canvas as you want. Use a color wheel as a reference for mixing your paints. All basic colors can be made by mixing the primary hues (red, blue, and yellow), and more specific colors can be made by mixing primary and secondary hues. Apple green Research paint colors are handselected by artists to give a well rounded selection of colors.
Begin painting the background. This is because when you paint, you will be layering upwards; hence, painting from back to front is the easiest way. Start with your medium value colors, followed by your darkest colors, and then brightest. Remember to add shadows and light points.
Break up your subject into shapes and work in small sections at a time. Paint medium values first, then add the dark shadows and the light values.
Add details using different techniques:

Stipple on paint by holding your paint brush vertically and tapping it onto the paper. This works best with a dry paintbrush and a small amount of paint, and will give the appearance of many small dots.
Use a palette knife to sweep on broad strokes of color. For a rough, unedited paint look, paint with a palette knife. Coat the knife in a thick layer of paint, and move it across your canvas to load up thick layers of textured paint.
Create a wash of color by thinning your paint with water. This gives an effect similar to watercolors, where the paint gradually lightens on your canvas. This is great for creating a gradation effect.

11. Finish up your painting adding last dabs of light and darks, any outlines you want to include, and finishing washes of color.