How To Paint With Acrylic - Adding More Color

Following on from our initial introductory first part of Painting With Acrylics we went through some of the art tools, including brushes, paints and canvases and started to go through a painting demonstration with Acrylic paints and the beginning steps included finding something to draw on to the canvas and a Yellow Ochre glaze on the whole of the canvas. If you missed this step, then go and take a look - Acrylic Painting Part 1.

Now, we can start to add some more colors into the mix as we add some Burnt Sienna (Brown) and a Crimson Red to the fantasy demon art that I drew in the last step. Right now though it's not about painting any details, it's about working the paint onto the canvas and trying to explore some shape and form to your original drawing or design. So in the video I start adding some Burnt Sienna as a beginning color, sort of like some shadow as a thin base coat, but when painting with acrylics yourself it's best not to worry about making any mistakes as you can over lay lots of layers of paint when each layer has dried.

Next I added the Crimson Red color next to the Brown acrylic to add a contrast of color. Note, that both the colors are obviously not going to be the final colors, just a start of intended color.

Watch the video to see the painting process....

Now we can use Titanium White to paint in a suggestion of the demonic teeth and as we only need to suggest the teeth we don't need to do it perfectly at this stage of the painting process, all the cleaning up of the painting and the final details all get done at the end. Lemon Yellow is then added and often times mixed with Titanium White to create some lovely base colors for the flames that are coming from the Demons mouth, these are used as a guide for adding Red and Orange later on and helping to flesh out the fiery flames.

Remember that Acrylic painting comprises many layers of paint particularly if you make a mistake you can simple paint back over certain areas and start again if all goes wrong and it's the many layers that can be used as a glaze to help make colors warmer or cooler.

Sometimes working on the flames takes some considerable time to get right as you may need to build on them with all of the fire colors like Red, Orange and Yellow and maybe a little bit of White thrown in for good measure. The experimental process of painting stuff comes into play quite often as you attempt to work the paint on the canvas and decide on the finalaity of your painting.

Working in the red over the Yellowy/White color is what you should aim for and then adding in the Orange/Red over the Red or at the side will make the colors easier to blend together. Everyones Painting process is different however I prefer to use a random approach instead of a methodical approach as you'll find that the more you experiment with the Acrylic paints you might produce some nice spontaneous paint effects along the way.

A lot of artists may for instance Paint light to dark or vice versa and it's finding that right balance for your own way of working.

Every now and then it is a good idea to see where your Painting is headed and how you will get there. Now is the time to study your Painting and work out what else it needs. In the case of the above painting I need to work on the background, but that will be last and I think adding some Purplish colors into the mix might help the reds become friendlier with each other and then I can blend some more of the Reds and add some more Orange and mid tone Yellows to further the blending process.

This Painting will continue and who knows how many videos I will get through to actually finish it, but it's a fun process nonetheless!

Just paint if you are thinking about it. All it takes is the initial start in painting and learning that way and building up your painting techniques as you go along.