Acrylic Painting Techniques: Learn To Paint With Acrylics

Acrylic painting requires practice and patience. For the beginner artist who wish to learn how to paint with acrylics there are tons of resources on the internet revealing the common acrylic painting techniques and tutorials of different artists. We call them cheat techniques. By learning and applying these methods that master artists use in their own works, it is very possible to learn acrylic painting on your own.

Most of the beginning artists prefer to start with landscape painting. Because it is the easiest way to start to paint with acrylics. After getting some experience and confidence, the next level usually is painting portraits.

Learn Acrylic Painting Techniques From The Masters

Usually artists draw basic elements of their composition on canvas before starting to paint landscapes or portraits. It is not preferable to draw hard lines with much details because of the risk that the drawings can appear even after the painting. This is why it is best to draw very softly for the purposes of the settlement of the elements of the composition correctly.

The grid method can help at this point which is a great way to get a small picture onto a larger area such as a canvas. It is actually a way to break a picture down into a dozen or more smaller more manageable pictures. Griding can be achieved by placing a grid over the photo then drawing grid lines on the canvas and simply copying what you see onto the canvas square by square until you complete the whole picture.

How To Paint With Acrylics Tutorial With Step By Step Instructions

A good acrylic painting lesson is I am painting series lessons and tutorials calleinsd Portrait Painting With Acrylics and Landscape Painting Using Acrylic Paints. Although it may take years to learn by trial and error, with the help of these online available tutorials and lessons, it becomes easy to learn painting. Indeed anyone can learn to paint with acrylics with ease no matter it is portrait or landscape.

Portrait Painting With Acrylics is a 33 page eBook with 1 hour video tutorial. Even people who never sketched before, will find how to cheat their way to creating beautiful portraits. Because the step by step instructions with pictures take you from the first sketch to the finished colored details including shading and highlighting. After taking this course, anyone can learn how to paint beautiful portraits in acrylics easily.

You will get tricks of a professional artist and learn how to cheat his way to paint portraits with acrylics. You will be given the techniques, supplies and other materials that you need. And finally learn with step by step explanations how to start, build and finish your acrylic portrait painting.

Inside Portrait Painting With Acrylics eBook pdf guide you will find information on:

• supplies you will need
• preparing the canvas
• creating skin tones
• painting all hair colors
• achieving an accurate drawing on the canvas
• painting eyes, noses, mouths and ears
• getting sparkling highlights in the hair and on the skin.
• proper shadowing techniques
• what not to draw and paint.
• painting backgrounds
• making dramatic final effects on the canvas

As a free bonus, you will get over 1 hour video lesson on how to paint people in acrylic. After watching the step by step instructions in the video tutorial you will be able to create lifelike eyes, mouth, teeth, lips, noses, ears, hair and skin tones.

Landscape Painting Using Acrylic Paint is a 58 page eBook which comes together with another 31 pages free eBook called Watercolor Painting Using Acrylics. Inside this step by step guide, you will find detailed information on creating beautiful paintings which you can give, sell or display with proud. You will not only learn the techniques to create clouds, reflections, shadows and "life" in painting, but also learn tips for painting the day scenes, night scenes, ocean scenes, sunsets, flowers and meadows, and also tips and techniques for adding buildings, effective shadows and highlights.

Painting Louvered Vinyl Exterior Shutters: A How-To Guide

This tutorial explains how to paint brand new paintable vinyl exterior shutters and is not intended or recommended for the PVC type of exterior shutters or repainting old exterior shutters. You must have the paint grade shutters for this procedure to work correctly.

First you need to decide whether to spray or brush the paint on with a paint brush. It is recommended that you use a spray system to paint your exterior vinyl shutters, as the result will come out more consistent.

Next is paint selection. There are three basic choices to consider and the choice you make is very personal to you and the style of your home:

1. Exterior flat paint
2. Semi gloss/satin finish paint
3. High gloss paint

Choosing the quality of paint for plastics is different than choosing the paint you would use for painting wood. Whether you are spraying or brushing, I always advise to use relatively inexpensive paints. I recommend this for two reasons. First, you will not have to deal with any moisture issues so the mil thickness of the paint is not important. Secondly, very high quality paints are more globular and intended for use with a roller, which makes the paint too thick for even spraying. Remember that a plastic product is inert and does not absorb or emit moisture vapors so protection from the elements is secondary.

Priming is dependent on the exact type of substrate you will be working with. If the material is a styrene like the Mid-America brand (only color #30) or a high quality copolymer like Alcoa Vintage shutters or other pre-painted product, and if you are using a flat exterior latex paint, you will get excellent adhesion without priming.

If you are using anything other than flat latex, always prime the surface of the exterior vinyl shutters first. The paint supply store will have inexpensive primer (wood primer is fine) and again it does not have to be high quality as it is only to provide adhesion for your top coats of paint.

Follow the directions and pay careful attention to the temperature guideline on the paint can for the best results.

You will need the following items to get started:

1. A pair of saw horses (or two large boxes)
2. A drop sheet (either plastic or cloth)
3. An equal number of cardboard boxes to the number of exterior shutter panels you are painting (the boxes are for storing the freshly painted exterior shutter panels on while drying)
4. Paint spray gun or for brushing a two-inch and a half-inch paint brush
5. Paper towels or a clean rag
6. A respirator if recommended by the paint manufacturer

OK, Picasso time to get to work.

Open louver shutters present a big challenge because of the angle of the slats and resultant difficulty of getting full coverage. If you don't address the space between the slats and you are installing the exterior shutters at eye level or higher, after you install your vinyl shutters unpainted spaces behind the slat will be visible.

If you are spraying, before you actually spray paint on the vinyl shutter use a test area for an even spray pattern and to make certain that the gun is working properly. The side of the cardboard drying boxes will work well for this. To paint louver vinyl shutters, lay the panel face down and begin to spray holding the gun at a forty-five degree angle then aim the nozzle directly into the slat cavity. Spray with even strokes and begin before your paint zone and always follow through your paint zone. Go to the other side and repeat. Always inspect for adequate coverage of paint on the exterior shutter before going to the next stage. While the window shutter is face down it's a good idea to paint the edges to ensure that they will be covered properly. I am always amazed at the missed spots on the edges when I don't do this.

If you are brushing, you will need the small brush for this job. Paint liberally between the slats, making sure to also paint the sides of the slat about one-half inch. Painting the edges with a brush while the exterior shutter is face down is a good plan as well.

Turn the exterior window shutter over. You do not need to wait for the paint to dry as the back side of the exterior shutter is recessed and will not rest directly against the cardboard box.

If spraying, use the same angle of the spray gun as you used on the back side of the louvers and spray into the slat cavity on both sides. Next, go to the bottom edge of the exterior shutter and angle the gun so you can paint the bullnose (the edge of the louver). Hold the spray gun at about a thirty degree angle and spray from one side to the other in even strokes, again overspray your paint zone to ensure the finish is applied evenly. The next step is to go to the top of the shutter and spray the face of the slat. Here you will hold the gun at a ninety degree angle to the slats (perpendicular to the slat), again over spray your paint zone. Re-spray the edges and paint the stiles (vertical rails). Finish with a second coat, inspect, and re-shoot if necessary.

Brushing is fairly obvious and requires little other than using your two-inch brush for the coat of paint. Be sure to inspect the edges of the exterior shutters for full coverage and that you indeed did cover the exterior shutter completely.

Move the freshly painted vinyl shutters onto one of the boxes you set up for the painted shutters to dry and repeat until all of the vinyl exterior shutters are painted.

Shad Storhaug is the founder of ShutterContractor.com and is an expert in providing advice on selecting, measuring, installing, and maintaining exterior window shutters.

How a Paint Company Lures You in With Their Color Wheel Display

Your average paint company knows that their most important advertising is done inside the paint retail location. A brand's paint color display (or color wheel) is its best tool to attract you to their paint. How can a paint company use its own color wheel to lure you to their brand? The answer is easy... color. For centuries, advertisers have used bright, bold colors to focus the attention of customers on their brand. The power of bright colors is evident in signs, logos, and almost every form of commercial marketing. This fact is common knowledge, and yet it still comes as a surprise to many people that paint companies use these same tactics to draw your attention to their line of paint colors inside every home improvement store.

Using the Sample Card to Sell the Color Wheel

Of course, paint companies are a little sneakier than traditional marketers. Paint brands know that when you are faced with an array of paint displays (such as in your local hardware/home improvement store), you are most likely to focus your attention on the color wheel display that most attracts your eye. Since the marketers of paint brands understand the human (or perhaps, "animal") attraction to bright colors, they know how important it is to include bright, bold colors in their paint lines and place them front and center in their displays. This is the best way to attract your attention to a paint company's color wheel.

So how does a paint company accomplish this color hypnosis of potential customers? Well, it starts with the sample card. Have you ever noticed how the brightest, most saturated color sample cards are always the first row you see in a paint display? Well you guessed it... paint companies are playing with a loaded deck (of sample cards, that is)!

But a Bogus Sample Card Equals Bogus Paint Colors

Of course, there's nothing wrong with stacking sample cards in the color wheel display so that the most attractive colors are the most visible. The problem occurs because so many of those bold, dramatic, "attractive" colors are basically useless as paint colors in your home!

It's funny, but many of the colors that a paint company puts in its line would never look good painted on any wall. The colors are 100% used to grab your attention when you are perusing paint displays. People are helplessly attracted to bright colors; they are much more eye-catching and far more interesting to our brains.

Sadly, not only are people more attracted to the paint color wheels because of these colors, but beginners are more likely to find one of these bright, saturated colors most attractive and end up choosing one as their new paint color. Unfortunately, for most of the reasons discussed above, those colors look ridiculous painted on walls.

To be fair, when brighter colors are painted on smaller surfaces, such as in an accent color, on trim, on a partial wall, etc, they are far less offensive than when they cover a room. But the brightest colors in the display - with the least amount of white, black, or gray mixed in - will rarely even work in these applications.

Obviously, when mistakes like this occur paint companies have nothing to lose. Whenever people pick paint colors that they are unhappy with, the paint company does not have to refund the customers' money. In fact, no paint brand in the country will allow you to return paint once you have purchased it. Even better (for the paint company), since the customer is unhappy with the paint color they chose, they are probably just going to buy a whole new batch of paints!

Designer Paint Color Wheels

Of course, there are a multitude of distorting factors making it difficult to pick paint colors that will end up looking attractive on your wall. So, rather than filling the world with disgruntled customers, paint companies have offered the marketplace a basic solution to their problem of conflicting interests. That solution is the designer, or "signature" brands that most paint companies now offer to accompany their primary brand.

Valspar Paint, for instance, also produces paint branded as Laura Ashley, Eddie Bauer, Waverly, and more. These separate lines, or collections, have their own color wheel displays and are usually available wherever the primary brand, Valspar in this case, are sold. Other examples are Disney Paints, currently produced by Behr, and Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart, formerly produced by Sherwin Williams.

By licensing these names, paint companies and retailers are taking advantage of the popularity of these well-known brands to attract you to these paints; that way they don't have to use obnoxious colors to bring your attention to their color wheel. If you look at the colors in these displays you will notice that they are generally missing those bright, saturated tones. Instead, most of the colors are more neutralized. Naturally, these colors are much more attractive to paint on a wall in your home.

Paying for a Brand Name Paint Color?

If you are worried about ending up with an ugly paint color, you may be somewhat safer utilizing one of these designer collections. However, the color range offered by any one of these alternative brands is very limited and typically the whole line of hues is all neutralized to about the same tone. This gives the smaller brand a nice consistent look, but it doesn't allow for much variety. Also, these signature paints are typically more expensive (often 50% more) despite the fact that you can get very similar colors from the primary "mother" brand for considerably less money.