Getting Started with Acrylic Painting

Back-to-school season is often the perfect time to discover a new creative technique or reconnect with an artistic practice. Versatile, vibrant and easy to learn, acrylic paint makes it possible to create quickly while exploring a wide range of styles, from landscapes and portraits to abstract art and mixed media.

Getting started requires only a few essentials, but choosing the right supplies makes the experience even more enjoyable and helps build good habits from the very beginning.

Here are the basics you need to start painting with confidence. 

 1- Choosing Your Acrylic Paint

Before you begin, it helps to understand the different grades of acrylic paint so you can choose the one that best suits your practice and creative goals.

Student-grade paints : Designed for learning and regular practice, student-grade paints offer an excellent balance of quality, coverage and affordability. They make it easy to experiment with colour mixing and different techniques while developing your artistic skills. 

Discover: DeSerres Student Acrylic, Liquitex Basics, Pébéo Studio and Amsterdam Standard Series. 

Professional-grade paints : With a higher pigment concentration, professional paints offer richer colours, better lightfastness and a more refined texture. 

They are an excellent choice for artists who want to create vibrant, long-lasting artwork.

Applying a finishing varnish is recommended to protect the painted surface and preserve the brilliance of the artwork over time.

Discover: Golden and Liquitex professional acrylic collections. 

2- Essential Colours to Start With

You don't need an extensive range of colours to begin painting. A carefully selected palette is enough to create a wide variety of colour mixtures and explore the many possibilities of acrylic painting.

A versatile starter palette includes: Titanium White, Primary Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Primary Red or Magenta, Primary Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber, Black, Green or Violet, depending on your projects. Titanium White is especially useful because it lightens colours, creates opaque mixtures and makes layering easier. 

Thanks to its excellent coverage and fast drying time, acrylic paint also allows you to correct or rework certain areas as your painting progresses. A limited palette is one of the best ways to learn colour mixing, develop an understanding of colour harmony and gradually discover the full potential of the medium. As you continue creating, you'll naturally discover which colours you use most often and expand your palette accordingly.  Acrylic paint sets are also an excellent way to get started, since they include the essential colours in one convenient package. 

Discover: acrylic paint sets. 

3- Choosing Your Brushes

In acrylic painting, your brush has a direct impact on texture, precision and the amount of paint applied. Synthetic brushes are especially well suited to acrylics because they are durable, easy to clean and retain their shape well. A few brush shapes are all you need to get started.

Round Brush: A versatile brush ideal for details, fine lines and strokes that vary in width depending on the pressure applied.

Flat Brush: Perfect for large areas of colour, backgrounds, geometric shapes and applying generous amounts of paint.

Filbert Brush: An excellent choice for blending, rounded shapes and smooth colour transitions.

Bright Brush: Ideal for creating texture, applying thick layers of paint and experimenting with expressive effects.

Discover: DeSerres, Princeton and Raphaël brushes. 

4- Choosing Your Painting Surface

One of the advantages of acrylic paint is that it can be used on many different surfaces. Each one offers unique characteristics that influence the final appearance of your artwork.

Canvas: A classic surface for acrylic painting, pre-primed canvas is ready to paint on and is suitable for both beginners and experienced artists. 

Acrylic Paper: An accessible option for studies, practice exercises and finished works on paper. Choose a heavy-weight paper designed to withstand wet paint. 

Panels and Rigid Surfaces: Wood panels, canvas boards and other rigid supports provide excellent stability, making them especially well suited to textured techniques and layered applications.

Choose surfaces primed with gesso to ensure optimal paint adhesion. 

Discover: DeSerres canvases and papers from Canson, Clairefontaine and Fabriano.

5- Helpful Accessories

A few additional tools can make painting more comfortable while opening the door to even more techniques.

A palette is essential for mixing colours and creating custom shades. Airtight palettes, such as Sta-Wet palettes, help keep mixtures moist for longer, giving you more time to paint without constantly remixing colours.

Acrylic mediums allow you to customize your paint for different techniques and effects by increasing transparency, changing texture, extending drying time or altering the final finish.

Palette knives are useful for both mixing colours and applying thick layers of paint to create textured effects.

Water spray bottles help slow the drying of paint on the palette and keep mixtures workable for longer. Water containers, cloths and paper towels are also essential for cleaning brushes, controlling the amount of paint used and keeping your workspace tidy throughout your project.  

6- Start Painting

One of the best ways to become comfortable with acrylic painting is simply to start painting. A few practice sessions are enough to discover how colours, brushes and textures behave.

Creating a colour chart or painting a few small studies helps you better understand colour mixing and quickly build confidence.

A light graphite sketch can also serve as a guide before applying paint.

Instructional books and practice workbooks are excellent resources for learning new techniques and gradually developing your own artistic style. 
 

Start Your Acrylic Painting Journey

Acrylic painting offers endless creative possibilities and supports everything from your first artistic explorations to more ambitious projects. With every painting, you'll develop your own approach to colour, texture and expressive techniques.

With just a few well-chosen essentials, all that's left is to pick up your brushes and start creating. 

To continue your creative journey, discover our articles on drawing, back-to-school personalization and organizing a creative workspace.