Startup Library: Painting With Acrylic

Class Preview

Everything you need to start painting with acrylic — tools, techniques and more. Ready to take the exciting first steps in acrylic painting? In this comprehensive beginner’s class, esteemed artist Nina Weiss walks you through the basics, from choosing a palette and paint to fundamental techniques such as color mixing, layering and more. Practice your new skills with simple exercises and projects including a monochromatic painting and full-color still life. With Nina’s step-by-step guidance, you’ll be confidently using acrylics in no time!

What You Need: Paint & Palette

Meet Nina Weiss and go over the tools and supplies you’ll need to get started, including what paint and palette to buy.

What You Need: Brushes

Take a look at the different types of brushes available as Nina explains what each one does, plus cleaning and care instructions.

What You Need: Supports

The great thing about acrylic paint is that it will stick to almost any surface. Traditionally it’s used on canvas. Here, Nina shows you various options for supports and how to gesso a pre-stretched canvas or board.

Method: Stretching Canvas

Nina walks you through constructing your own custom canvases, from buying supplies to finishing corners.

Method: Workspace

Having a clean and tidy place to work is essential for any artist! Nina shows you how to organize your workspace and arrange your lighting for maximum comfort while you paint.

Exercise: Value Painting of Geometric Shapes

Once your workspace is set up, you’re ready to start painting! First Nina helps you select the right brush to achieve the correct paint consistency and opacity. Then she demonstrates edge-to-edge painting before sharing the various composition elements.

Exercise: Value Painting of Eggs

Continue value painting as you work on a representational painting of eggs. Nina teaches you how to use directional mark-marking, depth and contrast to make the eggs look round, and blend values to create smooth transitions.

Exercise: Monochromatic Painting of Eggs

Throw some color in the mix as you create a monochromatic painting using the same subject of eggs. Continue to practice the fundamentals: seeing light, re-creating form, mixing, edges and transitions.

Exercise: The Color Wheel

Now you’re ready to create a color wheel! In this lesson, Nina teaches you basic color theory, from triads to temperature, and fundamental color mixing techniques.

Exercise: Neutralization Scales

After working with black, white and a single color, dive into the world of complementary colors: yellow/violet, blue/orange and red/green. Understand how neutralization works to open up your paint possibilities!

Exercise: Complementary Color Painting of Eggs

Use your new understanding of color theory and color mixing to create a painting of eggs using the complementary colors violet and yellow, as well as white.

Make It: Lemon Painting

Once you’re comfortable mixing colors, adjusting values and working with complements, apply your new skills to a lemon still life. Nina helps you work from dark-to-light and thin-to-thick, look for full-range values and use complex colors effectively.