Brushstrokes: Acrylic

LEVEL: BEGINNER

Limited Palette

Painting with just black and white helps the artist focus on value. Value is the darkness or lightness of a color. Using just black and white, the values will range from black, through a lot of gray midtones, to white.

TOOLS & PALETTE

• Stretched canvas, size 8" × 10"

• Flat bristle brush, size 10

• Flat bristle brush, size 20

• Flat bristle brush, size 2 or 4

• Palette knife

• Carbon black

• Bone black

• Zinc white

• Titanium white

STEP ONE

Use two different blacks (bone and carbon) and two different whites (zinc and titanium). Carbon black is a lot darker and more opaque than bone black and can be used for the darkest blacks of the painting. Zinc white is good for mixing grays with bone black for the midtones. ...