Tundraco's Daily Living Guide to Home & Garden Painting With Acrylics

Painting with acrylics is an ideal medium for the novice painter. Acrylics are easy to use and supplies are plentiful.

• Acrylic paints dry rapidly, in about 30 minutes.
• Water based acrylics clean up easily, requiring only soap and water.
• Painting mistakes can be rectified with a wet sponge.

Acrylic paints come in two forms, water based and solvent based. For a beginner painter, it is best to stick with water based paints.

• Acrylic paints can be purchased in tubes, jars, or bucket-sized containers.

• Professional Grade paints come in high and medium viscosity.

• Student Grade acrylic paint is the best choice for a beginner. It has less pigment and more filler, but is also much cheaper than higher grades.

When beginning to paint with acrylics, you should acquire a basic paint palette of colors. A basic color set will enable you to mix all the various shades and colors you will need. A basic palette consists the colors, red, yellow, blue, orange, green, and violet.

Gesso is a liquid that is applied to canvases and other surfaces to help the acrylic paint adhere to the surface.

• Nylon brushes are cheap, clean easily, and they come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
• Hair brushes are useful for blending paints and drawing fine lines.
• Bristle brushes are best to use when you want firm control over the thickness of the paint being applied.

Acrylic paintings are most commonly rendered on pieces of canvas, which are stretched over a frame. You can stretch your own canvases, or buy canvases that have been prestretched, from almost any art store.

• Linen Canvas is the most desirable. It is made from flax and is very strong, durable, and costly.
• Cotton Duck Canvas is inexpensive, but is also more absorbent. This can cause your colors to bleed together.

Acrylic paints can be used on almost any type of paper or paper product.

• Watercolor paper is precoated with a material to help it maintain its shape. It also comes in a variety of weights 90lb, 140lb, 300lb, and 400lb. The higher the weight of the paper, the stronger it is.

Acrylics also work well on a wide variety of surfaces such as sanded wood, ceramic, and fabrics.

• Non-porous surfaces such as glass do not work well with acrylics because the paint has a tendency to peel off.

If you enjoy the trial by error approach to learning, acrylics are a good medium to try out, as it is a very forgiving paint to work with. For others,

• Take a painting course at your local community center or college.
• Work through an online painting course.
• Read books on how to paint with acrylics.