We are continuing on the previous blog posts on how to be a better Acrylic Painter, be it at your own leisure or when you are at Art Jamming. Because we want you to be better painters, to fuel your passion for art. Without further ado, let’s go to the tips.

1. Being Afraid to Make Mistakes

We understand, our society is one that does not promote an environment where it is okay to make mistakes. But for your painting to improve and to produce quality pieces, you have got to start taking those risks. Only by daring to venture can you explore new things/ techniques and your art will improve by leaps and bound. You will know what you can or cannot do the next time or just simply the cause and effect of certain things.

2. Colour Mixing

Beginners tend to be obsessed with trying to have every single colour at their disposal. We are here to tell you that frankly, all you need is blue yellow red and white. As for the rest, you can mix the colours out, and eventually, you will grab the hang of it. Try and experiment to see what happen and you may surprise yourself with the kinds of colour you get.

3. Colour mixing part 2

Do not attempt to squirt out huge quantities of paint for mixing purposes because you may not even get the colour that you want. So just squirt a bit of both colour at a time. Also, start with the lighter colour, and then add the dark colour to it until you reach the colour you want. The reason being that it is easier to darken a colour then to brighten it, hence the order.

4. Take your brushes out of the water

Do not leave your brushes in the water, as you will easily damage the brushes by causing fraying. Simply lay them out of the water and flat, so that the water does not ever drip all over the brush, spoiling the glue of the brush. Just a simple art tip to save your brushes if you are doing it all wrong.

5. Sufficient Paint or Water on your brush

Maybe you are facing a situation where your paint is running out already and you are lazy to mix more. So you just use whatever’s left, but that causes bumpy and rough edges. Also, you will keep running out of paint to make one good stroke, as you will be forced to reload on the paint after just a small stroke. The effect created from this repeated reload may not be what’s desired.

6. Blending mistakes

Blending is a technique to soften your brush strokes, and not to mix all of the colours together. Thus, just a few strokes will be sufficient. If you over blend, it cannot be undone. The result would be that you have created mud because all the colours have mixed together or that you created a ring of paint outside the part you blend and the inside of the ring is lacking in paint. Calm down, just a few light strokes is enough.

For the video version where I learnt this from, click here!