Learning to Paint: A Beginner's Guide to Techniques and Materials

Painting is an accessible and rewarding activity for anyone, regardless of perceived talent. Overcoming the initial apprehension and embracing experimentation are key to unlocking a world of creativity, relaxation, and self-expression. This guide provides a comprehensive overview of how to learn painting techniques for beginners, covering everything from choosing the right materials to understanding fundamental art principles.

Dispelling Myths and Embracing the Learning Process

Many beginners worry about wasting time on a medium that doesn't suit their style or lacking the inherent talent to become an artist. It's important to remember that painting is a skill that can be developed through practice and dedication, not just innate ability.

Overcoming the Frustration Barrier: Every new skill has a learning curve, a period where you may feel unskilled and frustrated. Embrace this stage as a necessary part of the learning process.

Talent vs. Skill: Skill is the ability to do something, while talent is the rate at which you acquire that ability. While talent might accelerate the learning process, the amount of time and effort you dedicate to painting ultimately matters more.

Embracing Experimentation: Beginning painting involves experimenting and finding inspiration in your mistakes. "Happy accidents" can lead to creative breakthroughs.

Read also: Professional Painting Results

Focusing on Fundamentals: The path to success in painting lies in improving the fundamentals.

The Power of Practice: Instead of aiming for perfection in a single painting, commit to creating a series of works.

Defining Your Artistic Goals

Before diving into specific techniques, consider your artistic goals. What do you want to achieve through painting?

Do you aspire to create realistic portraits like John Singer Sargent?
Are you seeking a fulfilling hobby?
Are you interested in breaking into the commercial art world?

Your answers will determine how you proceed and what you should focus on learning. There is no single learning path to master painting.

Choosing Your Medium: Acrylics, Oils, or Watercolors?

The next step is to decide on a medium to focus on, at least initially. The major choices are oils, acrylics, and watercolors.

Read also: Learn Acrylic Painting

Acrylics: Acrylics are widely favored by beginners due to their ease of use and minimal special supplies. The paint dries very fast and they are versatile.

Oils: Oil paints offer rich color, stay vibrant even when dry, and allow for blending and corrections due to their slow drying time. You can vary the drying time and consistency of your paint dramatically using paint thinners and additional oil. If you think oil painting is too complex, then I urge you to reconsider. For those concerned about harsh solvents, odorless solvents or water-based oils are viable options.

Watercolors: Watercolors are considered the most difficult to pick up due to the untamed nature of water and the limited ability to rework errors. It is a water-based medium that means it’s easy to clean up after.

Recommendation: Start with acrylics or oils before venturing into watercolors. However, this is not to say you must choose a medium and ignore the rest. Try many different mediums but have one which you really focus on and get familiar with.

Essential Art Supplies for Beginners

The supplies you need will vary depending on your chosen medium. It may be worth starting with a beginner package that includes most of the basic supplies you would need. As for the colors, I suggest you start with a limited palette that has red, blue, yellow (the primary colors), white, and an earth tone like raw umber.

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Acrylic Painting Supplies: When painting with acrylics on canvas, you usually want to be sure the canvas is primed with gesso. Many pre-stretched canvases also come pre-primed, so you can often skip this step and paint directly on the canvas. For distributing acrylic paint, egg cartons are a great option. I label the egg cartons with the table name (I use colors) and store them in a large plastic bin with a lid that seals. The paint stays fluid for a good 2 weeks with this method.

Oil Painting Supplies: With Oil Paint you can change your medium to alter paint handling qualities. Due to the oil in oil paints (usually linseed oil), it’s best to work on a prepared canvas or board. Ensure a well-ventilated space; traditional turpentine and white spirits can be quite strong. I work with odourless mineral spirits or ‘Zest It‘ (a thinner made from citrus ) with very little odour compared to turpentine.

Watercolor Painting Supplies: The Winsor & Newton Artists’ Choice Professional Watercolour Set of 18 half-pan colours would be a great start for new watercolourists.

Brushes: I also spend some time talking about using the right tool for the job. Again, you would think it would be obvious, but it is not. I have flat, rounds, and liners in all sizes. I remind my students that big brushes for big jobs, and small brushes for small jobs. My students are expected to have several brushes when they are working. In addition, I remind them an underpainting may need to dry first if you do not want colors to mix. We use hair dryers to speed up the drying time if necessary.

Core Pillars of Painting

To learn efficiently, familiarize yourself with the core pillars of painting early on.

Color: Understand color in terms of hue, saturation, and value. Hue refers to where a color is located on the color wheel. Saturation refers to how rich, intense, or vibrant a color is.

Value: Every color has an underlying value somewhere between white and black. A strong value structure is not essential by any means (just look at many of the great Impressionist paintings) but it certainly helps in giving your painting a solid foundation.

Composition: Composition is the arrangement of shapes on a canvas or paper to make a pleasing design. It is also a way to lead a viewer’s eye through a painting. When it comes to composition, we can thank the ancient Greeks who developed the Golden Ratio, a precise mathematical formula for pleasing compositions. A simplified version of the formula is called the the rule of thirds.

Edges: An edge is what separates two shapes. It can be either hard, soft, or lost.

Brushwork: The physical marks left by your brush (or your palette knife, finger, or anything else you use to paint with).

Technique: How well you are able to perform certain actions. Good technique will develop over time as you gain experience and become more comfortable with your brush and paints.

Finding Inspiration and Choosing a Subject

The perfect subject should be inspiring and challenging. Is there a “big why”? Can you see a finished painting at the end of it all?

Creating Your First Painting

My main suggestion for your first painting is to start general; try to capture your initial impression of the subject. Think about the subject in terms of shapes and colors.

Reviewing and Reflecting on Your Work

Once you have created your first painting, it is time to take a step back and review what went right, what went wrong, and where you can improve. Look at your painting like an art critic. What is my first impression of the painting? Don’t worry about what other people think. Engage in the community. Enter competitions, visit galleries, talk to other artists, read artist blogs, subscribe to artist newsletters, etc.

Essential Painting Techniques

Acrylic Painting Techniques

Acrylic painting techniques are often characterized by painting in layers. This is mainly because acrylic paints dry relatively fast. Another consideration when painting layers with acrylics is how opaque or translucent your paint colors are. One final note about layering with paint: this might be my favorite thing about painting on canvas. Accepting that you can always start a new layer and paint over something that isn’t working is very liberating.

Alla Prima (wet on wet): This approach involves applying large amounts of wet pigment onto the canvas surface quickly before any drying occurs.
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.
Wet brush on dry canvas: This is probably the most traditional paint brush technique.
Wet on Wet: Wet on wet or alla prima involves applying a wet brush with paint to wet paint on the canvas.
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.
Impasto: 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.
Glazing: Glazing is a painting technique used to add subtle, translucent color to a painting.

Watercolor Painting Techniques

You need more brush techniques with watercolour. With this medium, mastering brush control is key for achieving textures and effects, such as variated wash, wet into wet, lifting and blooms.

Oil Painting Techniques

With oils, make sure that you don’t drag or you don’t reapply; it’s so easy to make colours dirty.

The Importance of 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. 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.

Setting Up Your Workspace

Firstly, consider light and ventilation. Essentially, the easiest thing is to have a table and a slightly angled board or a tabletop easel because then you can sit behind and paint in the right light. You can sit next to a window, but it will vary depending on what time of day it is or how dark it is. An LED bulb or an LED panel behind and above you is the best thing to get.

Learning to See Values

It sounds boring, but working with black and white to work on your tones, value, and contrast is fundamental. Practise blending, scumbling, dry brushing, layering, and impasto (thick paint application).

Copying the Masters

I often find beginners want to put their own mark onto a canvas; even when they’re first beginning, they don’t want to copy something. But if you look at any of the Students Success Pages, everyone following the same image with the same colours has their own character and natural style. So, when you are learning, I recommend copying the basics until you understand the language of paint.

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