I Have a Painting Kit - Help! (Rev 2-26-20)

“I got a great birthday gift: A set of acrylic paints with brushes, a palette, little canvasses and more.  I love it and want to start but I don’t want to mess it up.  Where do I start.” – Terence

Don’t panic.  The kit is set up for you to learn how to use the paints. Don’t expect to create a PAINTING right away.

Also, don’t be overwhelmed by all the choices and then get discouraged.  Start small. Pick two colors, maybe black and white, blue and yellow or whatever you like. Use a medium size brush and see how the paints work.

If you have canvases or boards you can try them, but you don’t have to.  Cardboard or poster board or whatever you have will work for experimenting.

Just use the brush to spread paint on your surface. Make circles or lines or happy faces. If you want, you can do a tree, a mug or anything simple that helps you experiment. Don’t worry about what it looks like. Don’t worry about making something to show. Just see what the paints feel like.

Try painting the colors side by side. Try blending them or painting one over the other.  Try mixing the colors and see what happens. 

Look at how the paints stick to the surface and how they mix or cover each other.  You can give a layer of paint a few minutes to dry and see how another color goes over it.  Play with the colors and different brushes and learn how to handle them to get different effects. You learn something every time you pick up a brush.

Some important tips:

  1. Have Fun!

  2. Have a container of water on your workspace to rinse your brushes every few minutes and between colors.

  3. Have a couple of rags or paper towels handy, one to wipe paint off the brush before rinsing and one to dry the brush. 

  4. Don’t let the paint dry on your brushes, it won’t come out.

  5. Don’t let brushes soak for long periods, water can soak into wooden handles and damage them.

  6. To save paint, squeeze small dabs out of the tubes onto your palette.  You can squeeze more out later but there’s no way to put it back into the tube.

    Copyright Jay Helfrich 2019

Jay Helfrich