Learning to paint
It’s finally time to learn to paint. We’ve come a long way in this course so far. We’ve gone from drawing our hands and learning about basic forms to learning about color theory and finally making our first painting of the four major forms with black and white acrylic paint.   . When I say “Learning to paint” this isn’t something that can just be learned with one quick lesson. There aren’t really any tricks or shortcuts. If you want to learn to paint you must dedicate yourself to …

How To Paint With Acrylics
Lesson 15
When learning how to paint with acrylics the most important thing is to first understand the properties of the colors (pigments) you have chosen to use. As you learned in Lesson 12 Color Theory Basics the most important factor as to how your paint will perform is dependent upon whether or not it is an opaque color. Opaque Acrylic paints will cover a surface better and avoid streaky transparent colors.  Then you’ve got to make sure you have a nice surface to paint on. You …

Warm and Cool Colors
Lesson 14
Warm and cool colors are important in painting for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that warm colors tend to move forward in space, while cooler colors tend to retreat. This is mainly because of how we experience the world and is pure science. Within the atmosphere there are zillions of little water molecules floating around. The largest of which form clouds and eventually dump rain on us. But the air itself also contains water.  So when we are looking faw away to the …

Analagous Color Scheme
Lesson 13
The next most important part of color theory is harmony.  Color harmony is essentially the art of putting colors together that look good. That’s pretty much it. I’ll keep using the musical metaphors because in music we also have harmony. So think about color harmony in the same way, except visually. When you here a song you can tell if the musicians are all singing in harmony or not, if there’s one person who is out of key then it also throws the others off as well. …

Color Theory Basics
In this Lesson you will learn:
1) What type of paint to buy (Materials)
2) How to control color intensity  (Intensity)
3) How to see the value (shade) of color. (Color Value)
Materials
First things first! It is important that you know how to buy the right paint for what you want to do.
There’s two types of paint. Transparent and Opaque. When you start painting it is HIGHLY recommended that you start by using only opaque colors. This will reduce the possibility of your paintings becoming streaky and dull. Transparent colors can be …