Quick and easy acrylic painting: for beginners of all ages!

1. City Lights Intro: Hi everyone. Welcome to foxglove hollows studio. My name's n, and I'm painting from the beautiful Karl Marx Valley on Vancouver Island on the West Coast of Canada. This painting, the packs are really big punch with minimal supplies and minimal tools. It's perfect for the beginner. You will need black, brown, yellow, red, and white acrylic paint. Craft paint is just fine. A palette, clean water, paint, break, a fine round liner brush, a small flat brush, kitchen sponge, blow dryer, Canvas, and masking tape. I've painted this one on an 11 by 14 Canvas. Or you could paint it on any size you like. Teach you how to paint a stunning sunset using a simple kitchen sponge. How to paint a moon using your finger. And an easy way to get a nice fine line. When you're all done. Don't forget to post your painting. I love to see my students work. Let's get painting. 2. Sea and sky: We're going to start off with some yellow and some red. There we go. This is acrylic paint. It's not fancy paint, It's just acrylic craft paint. Use this sponge, which is just a kitchen sponge that's been cut up into eight pieces. Just synthetic kitchen sponge, nothing special. I'm going to soak up some yellow. I'm going to dip into a little bit of that red, just like that. And I am going to, in horizontal strokes, I'm just going to put this on the Canvas. This is going to be different every single time you paint it because it's mixing on the Canvas. A little bit more. Cover the whole canvas with it and see how I'm going right from a tape. All the way over. This is such a quick paintings there. Now we're going to want to put two coats on it. Don't get too, too fussy with this. In fact, too fuzzy on the whole painting. I'm good enough. I'm going to blow dry that now blow dry really well because we're going to put another coat on here. Do that again. Load up with a yellow. A little bit of the red across our painting with it. More red will leave this streaky three key, streaky sunset. We go. Good enough. Now I'm gonna take a little bit of brown paint. Just a bit like that. I'm going to put it on my sponge. You can always put more on, take it off, and I'm going to streak some of that into the top. This is going to be like our night sky coming in. Constricted couple of streaks through here. We don't want to do this at the beginning when we're mixing the red and the yellow on the sponge because it takes over. When I get down here where my water is going to be, I'm just going to put some horizontal strokes as I can get maybe a bit more. It's leaving these streaks here. Put a little bit more yellow and red up here, I think. I think I want a little touch more red or yellow in there. Totally up to you. You build your sky the way you want it. Kind of nice having that street going through a little bit more over here. Maybe. This point I'm just using the edge of my my sponge down here too because it wouldn't be reflected. Maybe not quite as bright. Okay, that's good enough. Now, I'm gonna give that another blue tie. Gonna put tape on it next. So you want this really dry. Let's do that again. Load up with yellow. Well, a little bit of the red across our painting with it. More red will leave this streaky three key, streaky sunset. We go. Good enough. Now I'm gonna take a little bit of brown paint. Just a bit like that. I'm going to put it on my sponge. You can always put more on. It's hard to take it off and I'm going to streak some of that into the top. This is going to be like our night sky coming in. Streak, a couple of streaks through here. We don't want to do this at the beginning when we're mixing the red, the yellow on the sponge because it takes over when it get down here where my water is going to be, I'm just going to put some horizontal strokes as I can get maybe a bit more. It's leaving these streaks here. I'm going to put a little bit more yellow and red up here. I think. I think I want a little touch more red or yellow in there. Totally up to you. You build your sky the way you want it. Kind of nice having that street going through a little bit more over here. Maybe. This point I'm just using the edge of my my sponge down here too, because it would be reflected. Maybe not quite as bright. Okay, that's good enough. Now, I'm gonna give that another blue tie, gonna put tape on it next. You want this really dry. 3. Masking the horizon: All right, that should be dry enough. Going to find my horizon line, which I think going to run along there. Make that as straight as you can. Anchor it down and then just put that sponge that have the same color on it. Just a snippet along there too. And that should help us get a nice clean edge for that as well. You've got a week blow dry, and then we can put our mountains in. 4. Painting the mountains: I swear there's more blow drying in this painting and there is painting. Here we go. I've got a flute, just a flat brush here. I'm going to take a little bit of black on my palette, not a whole bunch. And I'm gonna take some of my brown scoop, my red little scoop, my yellow mix that all together. Take a little bit of black. And the goal here is to get something darker than our sky. Not really super, super dark. We want it to show up against our sky, but we don't want to tell you very black. There we go. That should do it right about there. Let's say it was quite see how dark it looks when you put it here. Better, close the curtain a little bit more. Ashamed to block the sun out. But now I'm going to make ourselves some mountains. You can make mountains that are pointy or you can make mountains that are more rolling whenever you like your world. That's what the mountains look like. Here. This is kind of like we look at our window. If you made these rounder, it looked like maybe up around a Soyuz in a lake. When you're doing this, try to keep this top edge of your mountain here. Try to keep that good and clean and crisp against the background. We go Pretty good. Now you'll see that there's some bits of Canvas still showing. So I'm going to give that another coat. But first, you guessed it, we have to blow dry it. I think that looks like I'm probably gonna have to mix up some more paint here. I'm not going to last me. Just close. If you have to mix up more. It doesn't have to be exactly the same color. Something closest good. I'm deeming that close enough. Be very careful along that top edge. Nice and clean and sharp. Good, good thick coat on there. And now we're gonna cross our fingers and we feel this tape off. 5. City lights: Now what we need to do, find a tiny down with white. We'll put a little dab right here. Just like that. With your pencil or a toothpick would work. Just put a little bit of white paint on the end of my pencil here. Dragging my hand through here, I'm just going to lightly put a few dots here. And this is going to look like little town on the other side of the water. Put some some lights in the water as well. Look like things have been reflected from the town. It'll have big lights and lights. And of course, as you get farther and farther out of town, the lights get farther and farther apart. Easiest way to build a little town. This a little bunch there. Let's say that there was a bunch of trees along the shore there and then another little bit of us, maybe it's subdivision or something in here. Some pink dots and some little dots. There we go. Don't forget to get some in the water because they wouldn't be reflected. The same over in this sort of vicinity here. Maybe this is just a little little community just down the shore, a little bit in the water. And then maybe along here. There was a few houses lined up. There we go. A few more than water. There we go. There's our little village or town, I guess it got quite big easy as pie just with your pencil. Some dots of white moon in here. 6. Ripples: All right, so might as well, while our paintbrush is still dirty with this color, we're going to put a little bit of waves in the sea here. I would like to turn it, turn my painting when I'm making a straight line. I'd like to turn my painting sideways, but you don't have to do that if you don't want to load my paintbrush up here and it's still that flat one. Load it up with this mountain color we used stuck the bristles. I've kept the Bristol stuck, stuck together like that. Going to be painting not this way, not broad with the chisel edge. So it's going to make a thin line. I'm going to keep it as straight as I can. I'm going to come across here in a thin line. I'm just lifting my paintbrush up every once in awhile and pressing down a little bit hard or every once in awhile. Just like that. The closer I get to the, to the foreground is painting fat or my lines are going to get comes from fat ones. Stagger them. I don't want it looks like it might have gotten a little bit crooked, so I'll just make fat are there that should straighten it out. Then maybe one down in here and this one's really fat one. To make them fat, I'm just pushing pushing down on my paintbrush so it spreads those personal zone. Here we go. 21 more, probably not. Let's take a look. There we go. Now we've got some waves coming in. Which is quite nice. I think I want to fix that right there. Not really, really thick. Just come in from this side, press down a bit. There we go. That's good enough. 7. The moon: Might as well do it while we've got the white paint here. I'm going to take my white paint, different finger into it. Dab it off a little bit so I don't have a whole bunch of my finger. And I'm going to put my moon right here. Put a dot down, and then I'm just making a little circular motion with my finger like that. Dhap it off so you don't have a whole bunch of paint on it. And it's going to make a sort of hazy outliner around it. Then I can get right back in again. And I can put a dot in the center. Might've been a bit too much paint. Just so it's a little bit brighter in the center of that moon. There we go. A little bit, a little bit of atmospheric haze on it. 8. The foreground: This painting just nips along speed of light. Go right back to my back, to my flat brush. Some black on the tray here. I'm going to mix a bit of water into it like that and flip my painting upside down like that. And now we're going to work on the foreground. I like to flip my painting upside down because I like to pull my grasp this way. I'm using that same chisel edge of my brush like we used with the waves. I hope my brush really close to the end gives me more of a reach with my brush. That's harder to be fussy. When you're holding your brush like this because you don't have quite as much control. Good when you're painting grass because for some reason, very often, I just want to make it look like it's all the same length. Ends up being the same length. Even if you are telling yourself don't make it the same length. Crossover, coming from different directions. Little bit of water and our paint makes the makes it easier to get a nice thin mine or thinner line. We go because we're using straight black which is darker. The mountains, hills, whichever we've painted, because we're using straight black, it's going to look closer. And so we've got even more dimension in our painting to make a few of these little bit higher. Not the same. Not the same length. Boring if they're all the same length. There we go. Now when I flip this, you'll see how much that has pushed the background back. There's our grass, There's our background. Now what we're going to do is dry it. Fairly well-known. 9. Orchard grass: Let's put out that little pointy brush again. Some black paint with some water in it. What's inky? Need it to be. Because we're gonna make some long skinny grass. Drawing that off. The flip this upside down. Like that. The, I am going to rest my hand on my canvas and as I do holding my paintbrush straight up and down. I'm going to give myself some grass. Nice long orchard grass. That's a long way. Try to be random about this. It's hard to be random and quite often because you just automatically want to make everything even patterned. Know why that is. Random is probably one of the hardest things to do. All right, so we've got all of these nice little blades of grass or stems or grass, maybe I'll put a few more short ones down in here. Now we're gonna do is just take a little bit of that paint on our brush and we're going to make little dots. Very ends of our grass like that. Like it's gone to seed. The ends of all those graphs, bits that are sticking up there. Such a warm, warm painting. The last of the summer. Dots are just insert a triangle shape. We go quite nice that dark against the brightness of the sky. Going to run down with a little flick. The sides. These grasses, just like that. Just a little flick up black little leafs sticking off the side of the stem. Ok. Now take a look right here. See, maybe I can hold this up so you can see it. See that, and that some dots in here from where I splattered, this is your opportunity. If you splatter in your sky, your opportunity to put a little bit of wildlife into it. So here is coeval. I got to put one on this one too. I start from the center of my seek ulcer. Serve them mustache shape. Let's start from the center of them. Then work out so that the point my my brush ends up as the tip of the wing flying around their lovely 1234. I'm going to put one more. You can't just have four. There we go, five seagulls all happily flying around in the dark. In the almost dark. 10. Sparkles: Let's take a little bit of white. Little bit of white. Add some water to it. Just still using your little tiny brush. I'm just gonna put some little dashes. The water here. Like the moon is shining in different places. Water. Just a little dashes. Dots in 12. Sparkles. Quite nice. There we go, Just like that. Guess what? Paintings done? 11. The grande reveal: Super easy, super fast. Now let's see what it really looks like. I'm going to peel the tape off. Loved this part. This is like framing, painting. Having to buy a frame. Sticking myself to myself. There we have it. Lovely little. Last of the summer scene. Down here. I got a little bit of paint under there. But when it's dry, I can pop over with my paintbrush and just touch that up with some white. All that's left to do is sign it. Sign mine right here. There we go. There's our beach grass painting. When this is completely dry. If you have any pencil marks on it from your marked for your tape, you can erase those. Anything that needs to be touched up like that, little spots. Maybe that needs to be touched up with white as well. You can just tape it and then touch it up. Put a good coat of a classy varnish on it, and you will be so, so happy and proud of yourself. Thanks for painting with me.