Essential Colors for Getting Started with Acrylic

Acrylic is ideal for crafts, collage, and mixed media work due to its flexibility, durability, adhesive properties, and low toxicity. However, with so many colors to choose from, it might be tough to decide which ones to purchase when you first begin painting.

If you're new to acrylic painting, we've got some pointers to assist you to speed up the learning process and choose the proper colors.

Ready to get to grips with that brush and paint?

Table of Contents

What is Acrylic Paint?

Colors to get started with acrylic painting

Tips to begin painting with acrylics

FAQs

Summing Up

What is Acrylic Paint?

Acrylic paint is pigment-based paint suspended in an acrylic emulsion. It's water-soluble and quick-drying, and once dry, it's water-resistant.

Acrylic paint has a wide range of applications. A finished acrylic painting can resemble a watercolor, gouache, or oil paint depending on how much the paint is diluted with water or manipulated using acrylic gels, mediums, or pastes.

It can also have its own distinct properties that are not possible with other forms of media.

What Makes Acrylic Paint Stand Out?

Artists used to create their own paints before the nineteenth century. This allowed them to create the color and thickness they chose, as well as regulate the usage of fillers if any were used.

Hand mixing acrylic is often not a viable option. This is due to the need to blend multiple polymers, as well as surfactants, plasticizers, defoamers, and stabilizers, as well as other technical challenges.

Instead, painters buy ready-to-use acrylic paint that can be tweaked with acrylic mediums or water.

Acrylic materials have a wider variety than watercolors and oil. Acrylics have the potential to adhere to a variety of surfaces, and mediums may be employed to alter their adhesion properties.

They may be used on a variety of surfaces, including paper, canvas, and a variety of other materials, such as hobby models such as trains, vehicles, and houses.

The Benefits of Acrylic Painting

• It's adaptable. You may paint on any oil- and wax-free surface. Canvas, wood, paper, pebbles, glass, cloth, cardboard, metal, and plastic are all examples of this.
• Acrylic paint may be used on nearly anything if properly prepared.
• It dries in a short amount of time. This helps you to complete your job more quickly.
• It's a water-soluble substance. There's no need for paint thinners since you can wash it off your hands and brushes with soap and water while they're still wet.
• It's less harmful and safer for kids and pets to use.
• It is less expensive.
• It's adaptable. Acrylics may be mixed with a variety of materials to create diverse textures, sticking properties, and drying times.
• It's long-lasting. Acrylics, as far as we know, are flexible and will not fracture, peel, or yellow.
• When dried, it's water-resistant.

Colors to Get Started with Acrylic Painting

You can't possibly buy or transport every color and tube of paint available. As a result, understanding how to limit your color palette while still being able to blend the colors you want is crucial.

There are numerous restricted color palettes you may use to get started painting with acrylics.

The colors mentioned here provide an excellent fundamental palette of acrylic colors from which you should be able to combine any color you choose.

Brisk Blues

Phthalo blue is a deep blue that may be used in a variety of ways.

When coupled with burned umber, it becomes quite dark, and because of its great tinting power, only a small amount of it has to be blended with white to make lighter blues. (This color is also known as phthalocyanine blue, monestial blue, or thalo blue.)

Because of its strong tinting intensity, phthalo blue requires some expertise, although many painters swear by it. Ultramarine blue is a good option for phthalo blue if you wish to use it more judiciously. It's also a very handy standard blue to have.

It's translucent, like phthalo blue, but the real color is different, and the tinting intensity is high but not as strong as phthalo blue.

You may also like this:

• Everything You Need to Know About Acrylic Paint
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• Acrylic Painting Vs Oil Painting - Which Is Better?
  

Radiant Red

Obtain a cadmium red medium tube (you also get a cadmium red light and dark). Cadmium red medium is a yellowish red that is warm and opaque.

Basic Black

Mars black is a relatively opaque hue that should be used in modest amounts until its strength has been exhausted.

Ivory black is another possibility, but only if you're not bothered by the fact that it's produced from burnt bones (it was created from ivory).

Youthful Yellow

Begin with a cadmium yellow medium tube. By adding white to this, you may simply make a paler yellow. If you find yourself doing this frequently, you might want to invest in a tube of cadmium yellow light as well.

If you wish to deepen yellow, use its complementary color, purple, instead of black, which tends to give an olive green instead of a darker yellow.

Wishful White

Titanium white is a brilliant, opaque white with a lot of coloring potential (meaning a little goes a long way).

Some manufacturers also produce a "mixing white," which is generally the cheapest and is engineered to blend nicely with other colors, as the name indicates.

Offbeat Orange

Yes, you can create orange by mixing yellow and red. However, if you're going to mix an orange frequently, having it ready-made in a tube will save you time, so get a tube of cadmium orange.

Great Green

Greens can be difficult to blend consistently unless you take careful notes on the colors and quantities you employ.

Phthalo green is a bluish-green color. To create a range of green colors, mix it with cadmium yellow medium.

Babbling Brown

Burnt umber is a warm chocolate brown that may be used in a variety of ways and is likely to become indispensable.

It works well to darken the tone of other colors. Raw umber is quite similar to burnt umber, although it's a little lighter and cooler.

Perfect Purple

It's recommended to invest in a deep purple, such as dioxazine purple. This is because a pure purple may be difficult to blend, especially when utilizing warm reds and blues.

Other Colours That Are Beneficial

• Payne's grey is a flexible, translucent dark blue-gray produced from a blend of blue and black, with a little red thrown in for good measure.
• A magnificent, golden, yellowish-brown known as yellow or golden ochre.
• Titanium buff, sometimes known as raw titanium, is a thick cream that may be used with burned umber to achieve skin tones.

Tips to Begin Painting with Acrylics

To help you get started, we've included some pointers to help you take off. You can read this and go along painting along with it.

Look for a Reference

There are a plethora of photographs on the internet that you may use as inspiration for amazing things to paint.

Before going out to paint in public, using picture references is a fantastic method to practice painting landscapes and urban areas. You can effortlessly develop your painting abilities because the reference doesn't shift.

Synthetic Brushes Should be Used

Acrylic paint is a medium-bodied paint that sticks to synthetic bristle brushes considerably better than softer brushes.

Brushes created specifically for acrylic painting are prominently labeled in art supply stores, making them easier to discover.

Make Use of Broad Strokes

When you use wide strokes instead of narrow ones, you'll be able to cover more ground and create more textures.

You may use broader strokes to paint a backdrop, fill up the sky, add water, and add mountains, for example. Smaller sections and details should be painted with thinner strokes.

Densely Paint

Don't be stingy with the paint. It's fine to use a lot of it and spread it out generously.

You may believe that using less paint or thinner paint would save you money in the long run. However it will just weaken the item you're working on and compel you to add additional layers, which will muddy the paint.

Adding Texture

To add some texture, use a palette knife. Using a palette knife instead of a brush is a great way to change things up. By scraping paint away or applying thick layers, palette knives may bring a variety of textures to your artwork.

Using a Thin Brush

For minor details, use a thin brush with long bristles. A long, thin-bristle brush, also known as a liner brush, is the perfect brush to use for the smallest details in your painting.

You may accentuate the edges of items by using a fine brush. A little flat brush can also be used to enhance details.

Work at a Reasonable Pace.

Because acrylic paint dries quickly, it's crucial to get into the habit of painting quickly.

It's difficult to reactivate acrylic paint after it's dried. Extenders, which add moisture to the paint and help it dry faster, are available for purchase.

Creating a Contrast

To create contrast, utilize warm and cool colors. The easiest method to make your paintings visually engaging and realistic is to use contrast.

Warm hues (reds, yellows, and oranges) can be used in conjunction with cold colors to achieve this (blues, purples, greens).

Make Your Artwork vivid and Colourful

Use bold colors if you want to stand out. When white highlights and regions of vivid or surprising color are added to a painting, it's astonishing how lively it becomes.

Use a Variety of Methods

Acrylic is a versatile paint that may be used in a variety of ways. To blend and combine the colors seamlessly, you may even paint with your finger.

• Experiment and have fun with the paint by mixing new colors, using unconventional tools, and working on unanticipated surfaces. These are the elements that will provide variety to your painting and help you build your own style.

Painting Over Mistakes

When the item is dried, paint over any imperfections. Don't worry if you make a mistake.

You won't have to wait long for the paint to dry before you can quickly cover over any stray markings or unwelcome hues.

FAQs

What are the fundamental acrylic colors that I'll need?

Painting with Acrylics Checklist :

• Titanium White is the color of titanium.
• Black the color of Mars.
• Cadmium Red Light Primary Magenta
• Quinacridone Red or Alizarin Crimson
• Primary Yellow, Diarylide Yellow, and Yellow Ochre are all examples of yellow.
• Primary Cyan, Ultramarine Blue, and Phthalocyanine Blue are all blue colors.
• Pyrrole Orange or Cadmium orange are two types of orange.

What Colours Should You Start With While Painting?

When painting with acrylics, the mid-tones (local color) are normally painted first, followed by the darks (shadows), and finally the lightest areas (highlights).

When using acrylic paint, one thing to be mindful of and strive to avoid is 'hard edges.'

How many colors do you need to paint with acrylics?

Having a palette with two of each of the fundamental colors, red, yellow, and blue, is one method to solve this difficulty.

It is suggested to have a palette of six colors, each with two primaries. However, it is found that in practice, especially if you're new to acrylic painting, this may also be a little intimidating. Start with whatever minimum.

Summing Up

We all know that with only three main colors, you can create a rainbow of hues (blue, red, and yellow). However, nothing beats the convenience of being able to squeeze a certain chosen hue right from a tube.

Furthermore, some of the hues in the tube are just brighter or darker than anything you could create yourself.

This tutorial was created with all of the basic yet crucial colors in mind to assist you in painting with ease. As a newbie, you won't have to waste time looking for colors.

As you gain experience with acrylic paint, you'll be able to choose from a wider range of colors and tones.

Please share this blog with your fellow artists if you find it beneficial and let us know your color experience in the comments below!