I'm a beginner. How do I get started in acrylic painting?

I get asked this question often. So here’s my advice to beginners just starting in acrylic painting. What to get, what not to get, and how to start. 

First and foremost, get many surfaces to paint on. Paper, canvas panels, and sketchbooks have a lot of surfaces ready to paint on. Check out my Amazon store for some supplies.

Then get some pretty good paint. You can start with student-grade cheaper paint, but honestly, you’re doing yourself a disservice. If you start with good paint, it’s easier to make the painting look good. And in the long run, you’re not saving that much money. Student grade or cheaper paints aren’t as opaque, they don’t cover as well, and the colors are not usually brilliant. So you end up using more of them because you have to paint things twice or mix up more colors because the colors are dull. 

Try using professional-grade paint like Golden and extending it. Then you get the best of both worlds. Great paint that you can stretch a long way. Use Soft or Heavy Gel Gloss to stretch the paint without losing color or quality. See the video above on how to stretch your paint. 

Secondly, decide what you like to paint and paint that. You do not need to learn to draw to paint. You can start with color and a brush and see where it leads you. 

Don’t listen to the naysayers. You’re the boss. If your painting is a simple green splash of paint with a black square and you love it… don’t listen to anyone who says it’s not ________ (finished, “real art,” good enough, or any other nonsense someone wants to say about your art). This is your true creative expression, and no one, NO ONE, gets to judge it. Do you get how this infuriates me? Yeah. I have a little soapbox. 

Finally, check out my book Acrylic Painting With Passion. It’s loaded with projects you can do now, no matter where you are in your exploration of acrylic paints. It also has a couple of good chapters on the Rules and Tools of painting. Easy to understand and put to use. I wrote it to demystify painting and make it accessible to everyone. 

Now, get out there and paint something!