Paint With Acrylics

Painting in acrylic is literally painting with plastic. It's a little like painting with watercolors, but it dries waterproof. Because acrylic painting is so versatile, there are literally hundreds of different things you can do using acrylics. The only limit on what you'll be able to do is the limit of your imagination. In this article, we'll go over some basic setup tips, as well as some painting techniques, such as blending, tinting, and adjusting opacity.

Steps

Prepping Your Surface

  1. Get your painting surface. You can either paint on a piece of plywood (or sections of wood with cross supports) or paint on canvas board or stretch canvas. Choose any medium onto which acrylic paint will easily adhere
  2. For wood, consider layering the surface. Find textured or origami paper for the surface. For a plain background, paint the surface white. For paper, cover the wood in Mod Podge and lay the paper on top of it. Use a book or other object to ensure that there are no bubbles. Allow it to dry, then add ten or so layers of Mod Podge.
  3. Sand the surface. Wet the surface, then sand with 120-grit sandpaper. You want to paint on as smooth a surface as possible.

Painting

  1. Make sure your paint stays in good condition. Acrylic paint dries quite easily, rendering it harder to work with. Make sure you keep your paint workable by doing the following:
    • Spray your palette with water every now and then while you paint. Having a small spray bottle filled with water at hand helps greatly.
    • Only squeeze a small amount of acrylic paint at a time. There's no need to get zealous; work only with the amount of paints you need.
    • You can purchase a stay-wet palette that helps keep moisture in your paint. These palettes usually come with both blotting paper (for underneath) and greaseproof paper (for on top). The blotting paper is briefly soaked in water and the greaseproof paper is laid out on top of it.
  2. Manipulate the opacity of the paint with water. Applied straight from the tube, or mixed with a solid white, all acrylic paints can look opaque. Manipulate the opacity by adding more water. The more water added to the paint, the more transparent the color becomes. Use transparent paints for watercolor or airbrush effects.
  3. Paint with large brushes first, then work your way to the smaller, detail brushes. Begin with larger outlines and then work your way to more detail. You might find it helpful to work with opaques while doing outlining, and then work with more transparent colors for detailing.
  4. Get in the habit of blotting your paintbrushes. After rinsing out the color of your brushes in water, lightly dab or blot your clean brushes on a clean cloth. This will keep water from running up and down the heel of the brush, creating blotchy paint on the canvas.
  5. Learn how to thin out acrylics. There are relatively few rules when it comes to acrylic painting, but one of them is that when mixing acrylic out of the tube, to use no more than 20% water by volume (compared to the paint). Any more than 20% water or mineral spirits and the binding agent that makes the paint stick to the surface might fail, causing the paint to peel off at some later date.
    • Mix in other mediums, such as glaze or texture paste, when thinning the acrylic. Glazes give the acrylic a variety of effects, including marbling, trompe l'oeil, and glazing. Texture pastes add texture to the color, only dampening the color a bit after drying; they can be made more glossy by applying a varnish on top.
  6. As you paint, occasionally look at the image in the mirror. This can help reveal any imbalances in your piece, and also point out any mistakes you may have made.
  7. Start learning how to blend acrylic colors together. Blending acrylic colors is both fun and fascinating; at times, it can be difficult. With a little bit of patience, and a lot of experimentation, you'll start blending with verisimilitude quickly.
    • Use an extender when blending. An extender is an acrylic medium that slows drying time while increasing "open time" of paints, allowing them to blend easier. Extender can be used both on the canvas and on brushes.
    • Use the side of your brush to distribute the paint. Use the tip of toe or your brush tends to scrape paint off instead of evenly distributing paint.
    • Blend two colors together by drying your paint brush and tugging on the under blended line until the two colors start blending. Sometimes, you'll want to soften the two colors so that the blending is even and uniform; other times, you'll want the blending to be harder, so that the effect is less noticeable.
  8. Make hard edges with masking tape. Masking tape can be used like painters use painter's tape when outlining the edge of a ceiling, for example. Masking tape can be applied to already dried paint without damaging it; simply press down the tape so that no paint escapes under its surface, bleeding underneath. Then, after you've painted your hard edge, remove the masking tape to reveal your perfectly straight line.
  9. Learn how to tint and shade. So you have the base of a lovely green, but you want to make it lighter; or you have the base of a wispy fuscia, but you want to make it darker. Painters working with acrylic paints can lighten or darken their colors by either adding white or adding black. Lightening colors is called "tinting"; darkening colors is called "shading."
    • Tinting is limited by the color you're using. Light colors can only be tinted so much; darker colors can be tinted more because there's more to work with in the beginning. A little bit of white can go a long way, so start off conservatively at first.
    • Shading can darken colors. Add only a bit of dark to begin with, even more conservatively than when adding white. Mix thoroughly or you'll find small streaks of black in your final color.



Tips

  • After you've prepared your supports and have something to paint on, consider layering with colored/textured paper, drawings or photographs. Then add several coats of Mod Podge and paint over it.
  • After using several layers of Mod Podge, sand the surface smooth with sandpaper (120–150-grit.)

Warnings

  • Acrylics are always darker when they're dry, so consider this when mixing colors.
  • Do not preserve your painting with Mod podge as that is glue and will ruin your piece. Mod Podge although good for other crafts, it will bubble when applied and dries with a slightly tacky surface. Use a varnish made specifically for acrylics and be sure to test a small area of paint after the paint cured for at least 72 hrs.
  • Don't hesitate to purchase student-grade, nontoxic paint.
  • Some paints contain heavy metals. All high-quality paints will have something toxic in them! Wear gloves if you use toxic paint, especially titanium white (which generally contains lead).
  • Do not wash your color plate, acrylic might lead to pipe clogging. Use a plastic tray as a color plate, let the leftover paint dry after you finished using it, and you can peel it off from the tray when its completly dried. You can also put new paint directly on the dried ones. Only wash your brushes.
  • Consider wearing a apron while working with acrylic. You can't wash it off if you get acrylic on your clothing.

Things You'll Need

  • Long-handled brushes
  • Acrylic paints (read warnings)
  • Something to paint on (wood, canvas board, etc.)
  • Mod Podge (optional)
  • Spray bottle with water
  • Plastic palette or palette box
  • Water to clean brushes
  • Paper towels
  • Sandpaper

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