Acrylic Painting Step by Step

Beginning with an Underpainting

When you want to produce a painting with a particular mood, remember that the first applications of acrylic paint will influence the “temperature” and feeling of the completed painting. So begin by applying a warm or cool base coat to the canvas before defining any objects in the composition. Unless applied extremely thickly, acrylic paint is not an opaque medium. Therefore this base coat—or underpainting—will show through and interact with the subsequent layers of paint, unifying the painting with an even sense of temperature. For the bright, sun-drenched shore in this painting, I choose a warm, medium magenta for the underpainting—a rich color that glows through even the final layers of the painting, resulting ...