How To Paint With Acrylics on Canvas For Beginners

As we all know, painting with acrylics is not easy, especially if you are painting on canvas. Most experienced painters actually spent a lot of time and practice mastering this painting technique.

Therefore, we will try to explain to you everything you need to know to achieve the best possible results when it comes to painting with acrylic on canvas.

We will divide this article into several steps so you can have the best insight into the whole process. So, let’s begin.

Step by Step Acrylic Painting For Beginners

In order to learn how to paint with acrylics on canvas, first, you need to buy and set up your supplies. Let’s see more about that.

Pick The Right Canvas

Pick only canvasses with the exact weight of 8 to 10 oz. This is important because you need to know that heavier-weight canvasses are better, and they offer more quality paintings in the first place.

The heavier the canvas is, the better the canvas will be. Also, it will provide better results. Besides that, the weight of the canvas is determined by the thread density, which directly affects the texture in the following ways.

Sanding Canvas

It is important to begin by sanding the canvas with high-quality 200-grit sandpaper. This will ensure that the top threads are smooth and that your brush will softly slide across the canvas.

Besides that, gesso is a pretty convenient way of enriching your paintings with the finest possible touch.

However, after you apply the gesso to your canvas, you need to let the canvas sit there for an hour. This is important because gesso takes time to be absorbed by canvas.

Get a Variety of Brushes for Acrylic

With only one brush, your creativity is a bit limited, and that is something that bothers every artist. Therefore, you need to get the variety of brushes that are specially designed to work with acrylic paints.

In that light, you will have the best possible working environment and tools to begin to paint on canvas with acrylic. Not only that but also, you will be provided with the best possible results.

Choose Only Professional Grade Acrylic Paint

As we all know, there are plenty of different options when it comes to acrylic paints. Anyhow, by choosing the high-quality one, you surely will be able to achieve the best results and paint a wonderful picture.

Since there are many different options here, we will suggest some.

Paint Palette

To ensure that you can always pick a different color without any problems, it is crucial to organize your paints in a palette. Therefore, you should get a good palette for acrylic paints and pour only the primal colors.

Next, it is important to mix these colors to get the variations of paint colors as well. This will provide you with the best possible work environment, and you can easily paint on canvas without any trouble.

Acrylic Painting Techniques For Beginners

After you have prepared everything to start the painting process, we can now discuss how you can actually begin to paint. Let’s start.

Sketch your ideas on the canvas first

It is absolutely important to begin with the sketches. Namely, you can use a charcoal pencil and begin sketching your ideas on the canvas. This way, you will make sure that you can erase something if you don’t like it.

Also, charcoal is a convenient way to start every painting since you can overpaint it later with acrylic paints. This is because charcoal will dissolve into paint later on.

Mix the paints before starting anything

Before you start painting with acrylic on canvas, it is important to know that you need to mix the paints first.

Simply speaking, you can start with the primal colors like red, blue, and yellow. After that, you can create variations of colors that you find suitable for your painting.

Therefore, having everything prepared in your hand is quite important since you can easily, and without any problems, begin to paint on canvas.

Dip the brush in water

After preparing the paint and the color variations, it is time to dip the brush in the water first. Why is this important? Well, when the brush is wet, you can apply more paint on the canvas, and the result will definitely be better.

Otherwise, if the brush is dry, the paint will dry faster, creating problems in your work.

If you want to change the color and use the same brush, you need to rinse the brush’s head first. This will allow you to use different colors any time you like.

Work fast because the paint will dry

In order to achieve the best possible results, you need to work quickly. This is actually because the paint will start to dry, and you can’t let that happen.

However, you can’t finish a painting in just two minutes. But, try not to extend your painting process into 4 hours of work.

Also, it is quite important to know that you can always slow the drying process of your painting with a wet paper towel that you can put on top of your painting.

Conclusion

As we can see, painting with acrylic paint on canvas is not that hard. But, you need proper knowledge in order to achieve the best possible results.

We have discussed everything you need to know, so it is time to start with the painting.

Keep in mind that you need to follow these steps in the given order if you want to achieve wonderful results.

You may also like:

• Does acrylic paint stay on glass?
• Mineral spirits or Paint thinner – Which one is for you?
• How to clean paint brushes at home