Reddit reviews Painting in Acrylics: The Indispensable Guide

I second both books posted by Sykirobme.

The first one I got was Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings and it was great for someone like me who have zero background on drawing and painting. Started out slow and super basic and I noticed myself putting more and more effort as I went along the projects.

Then I got Acrylics for the Absolute Beginner, a landscape instructional, which was fun to follow and I learned a lot. I kept getting "you painted that?" reactions lol very encouraging and I have to make clear the paintings were not originals and I followed tutorials from a book.

I purchased Painting in Acrylics: The Indispensable Guide as a reference for tools/theory/techniques. And I like it so far but haven't read in depth because I keep getting distracted by other books I find at the library and attempting some originals.

I hope that's helpful. Also, reiterating that this is from the perspective of a beginner (5 months in!). Folks with more experience might have different/better suggestions. Happy painting!

Wow, thank you!

I work in a pretty traditional way, blocking out everything with flat color, then building things up in layers. The block-in is dry when I start working details...for this one I did a lot of glazing and wet-on-wet work - no retarder medium on this one, though I don't hesitate to use it when I need to do smooth blending in large areas, like a sky during sunrise - to build up the volume on the stones. In a couple places to get some colors and values right, I used glazing or gel mediums to add some transparency.

To get the colors to pop, I try to carefully select my palette. Some of those yellows are actually quite dull, but look brighter because of the colors they're next to. I try to coordinate my colors, paying attention to complements and temperature (the shadows, for example, are very warm, using a warm blue mixed with burnt sienna...that makes the lighter blue glow a bit more, plus it is a sort of purplish-black, which complements yellow and so makes that stand out, too). I also have learned that it's important to pay attention to the opacity of your pigments. It's easier to get the sharp edges using opaque colors as opposed to transparent ones.

The other thing to keep in mind with edges: it's easier to make defined edges using contrast.

Sometimes for lightening colors, I will use a zinc white or unbleached titanium as opposed to titanium white. Titanium white can pastel-ize your colors easily. Zinc white or unbleached titanium can lighten your values without washing out the hue. It'll make a red a light red as opposed to a pink, if you know what I mean.

For paints, I use full body acrylics. For this, most everything was done using Liquitex Heavy Body paints, but I have a lot of student-grade paints that I intermix freely: Liquitex Basics, Daler-Rowney System 3 (a very underrated brand, imo...avoid their Simply... line, but System 3 is great and inexpensive) and even some really cruddy ones I found at my local Ocean State Job Lots. I wanted to use the pro-quality stuff on this one because I was concerned with lightfastness...I'm pretty sure he's got UV lights on that aquarium and I didn't want anything to fade.

Hope that helps! And thank you again. I'm humbled that you like my work.

ETA: My favorite books on the technical aspects of painting (so far) have been Painting in Acrylics: The Indispensible Guide by Lorena Kloosterboer and How to Paint Fast, Loose and Bold by Patty Mollica. Both of them have lots of information on color mixing and value, and I'm still working my way through applying the lessons I've learned from them.

Further edit: for what it's worth, I've never been able to use oils effectively at all. Acrylics are just a medium that speaks to me more...I might be coming to you for tips one day if I try to use oils again!

Edit3: I have a process pic gallery here to give you an idea how I did this one: https://imgur.com/a/yn1EiUZ