If you’re a beginner who considers trying out acrylic paints, or someone who has been painting for a while but feels like you just can’t get the colors right – this article was written for you!

If you need something to guide you through your first mission of choosing the best acrylic paint colors to buy (like a video game tutorial), you’ve come to the right place.

 

Acrylics are a wonderful choice for so many reasons.

  • They are the easiest way to start traditional painting.
  • They make it very easy to correct mistakes if you make any.
  • They dry quickly and completely, so your work won’t get messy. This is great when you are a beginner and you need some time to get used to painting and practice your skills.
  • You can use anything to paint over them, glue things to the surface, use stamps and inks, liquid mediums, and the dried paint won’t mind.

I, personally, love making mixed media art journals, and acrylic paints are absolutely irreplaceable when it comes to coloring backgrounds or painting any details on any layer or type of surface.

  • They are much more fade-resistant (have higher permanence ratings, as it’s called) when exposed to light than watercolor or oil paints.
  • Also, they can either be mixed with water, to have an almost watercolor-like condition, or not mixed to stay nice and thick;

or they can be mixed with various special mediums that alter their drying time, their texture, their glossiness and even can add glitter to it. What freedom!

 

Choosing A Color Palette

Do not worry about needing to choose a basic color palette that will give you a possibility to draw absolutely anything.

You don’t have to purchase dozens of colors because they can be easily mixed out of the most versatile and basic ones.

Of course, you can buy a ready-made kit of colors, but, to be honest, you won’t be using absolutely all of them from the beginning.

Besides, learning how to mix colors would be very useful for developing your skills and understanding how it’s all done in general, so later you’ll be able to improvise easily.

 

So, where do you need to start and how not to get lost in this confusing sea of various colors?

acrylic paint colors products chart | acrylic painting for beginnersEveryone probably knows that by having only red, blue and yellow you can make almost any color (except for white).

That’s how RGB printers work, obviously just leaving a blank space with no ink where there’s supposed to be white.

Another mixing scheme is dark blue, bright acid pink, yellow and black, and that’s how CMYK (cyan/ magenta/ yellow/ key color) printers work.

But in painting, it’s a little different and not as straightforward as it seems.

There’s a thing called color bias, which can shortly be described as “if the colors aren’t absolutely pure, you won’t be able to get a perfect color after mixing”.

One color can make either one pure color or another when mixed with two different opposite colors. In the later case the outcome will be dirty and dark.

This is about chemistry and the pigments in the paints that usually aren’t pure and have some hints of other pigments in them, which is okay.

And this is also the reason why real painting with real mediums doesn’t completely relate to color theory. Which means, from lots of other people’s experience, that you’ll need more than three colors in your palette.

 

12 Necessary Acrylic Paint Colors For Beginners:

Burnt Umber

It’s a pretty dark color, but it’s very commonly used for toning the colors down and darkening them, and is basically indispensable, no matter what color palettes you prefer for your drawings and what their genre is.

It’s not a straight, strong and uncompromising black, but a chocolate dark brown, which makes it better for mixing with other colors and making them look natural.

 

Mars Black

It’s a very strong and pretty opaque one, and when you mix it with other colors, you’d better watch out.

You’ll need very small quantities of it for mixing, and you will also need to get used to its strength and darkness. But after you conquer that darkness, you’ll rule it.

 

Titanium White

Classic bright white that you’ll need anytime, anywhere and for any painting. It has strong tinting power, so, just like with the black, you’ll need just a little of it every time.

It goes well with any color, it’s versatile and useful, so I’d even recommend buying a tube (or jar) of titanium white that would be bigger than other colors you’ll buy.

 

Phthalo Blue

A warmer shade of blue, intense and bright. It can be very dark when applied thickly straight from the tube and not mixed with anything, but makes a fascinating sky blue color when mixed with titanium white.

If you apply it in a thin layer without mixing, it’s a very transparent color.

 

Cadmium Yellow

You can easily make a lighter yellow out of it if you need (using titanium white that was mentioned above. I told you-you’ll be needing a lot of it!).

Or make it darker using its complementary color, like purple. Not black, because it’ll make dull dirty green instead of dark yellow. It’s an opaque pigment with wonderful tinting properties and can replace all the yellowish palette single-handed.

 

 

Phthalo Green

Greens are generally known as hard-to-mix colors, so owning this one would make your work much easier. It’s a bright bluish green with high tinting strength.

When mixed with cadmium yellow in various proportions, it will produce a large variety of shades of green, so it’s the only green you need for your adventures.

 

Cadmium Red

Reliable, warm, strong, pretty opaque, this one is your best friend when it comes to red colors. It mixes easily and will help you create a lot of colors, from pink ones to orange ones.

It has pretty low fade-resistance (so-called light-fastness) level though, as it happens with all red pigments, not just to this particular one, due to their chemical composition, so you’ll have to keep that in mind.

 

Dioxazine Purple

Dark, juicy and vivid purple colors like this one can be really tricky to mix yourself, so it’s best to have a pre-made one and make it darker or lighter, adjusting to your needs.

Just as phthalo blue, it’s pretty transparent, but it’ll produce a wonderful outcome when mixed with other colors, especially when you need to paint cool-colored shadows or something like that.

acrylic paint colors products chart | acrylic painting for beginners

 

These are the most basic ones that will help you make 90% of all the other colors and make them good and clean.

There also are some other useful colors for you to keep in mind:

Alizarin Crimson

A cooler red color that is more biased towards purple rather than to orange. It will make gorgeous bright pink when mixed with titanium white.

Fun fact: it’s also one of the most versatile colors of Bob Ross.

 

Payne’s Grey

A transparent dark blue-tinted grey, which looks very cool and is actually hard to achieve on your own.

It can be useful in mixing and darkening colors.

 

Titanium Buff

11. Titanium Buff.  

It’s an absolute must if you want to draw people because when mixed with burnt umber, it’ll help you make a variety of skin colors.

 

Cadmium Orange

An opaque single pigment color with high tinting strength and great coverage. Besides, it’s orange.

Who doesn’t like a clear and bright orange color?

 

Note: I love and use Winsor and Newton, and that’s why I picked them as a visual representation. Another great brand out there is Liquitex  

Here is an overview of the colors:

Sale Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Burnt Umber
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Sale Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Mars Black
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$12.69 $11.99
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Sale Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Titanium White
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Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Phthalo Blue Red Shade
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$17.07
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Sale Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Cadmium Yellow Medium
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Sale Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Phthalo Green Blue Shade
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$15.39 $9.63
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Sale Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Cadmium Red Medium
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$21.39 $12.99
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Sale Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Dioxazine Purple
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Sale Winsor & Newton Galeria Acrylic Color, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Permanent Alizarin Crimson
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Sale Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Payne's Gray
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$12.99 $7.99
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Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Buff Titanium
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$13.29
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Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic Paint, 60ml (2-oz) Tube, Cadmium Orange
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$16.00
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Further Tips

Now, after you chose your basic palette and are ready to dive into it all (the painting process, not the paints themselves!), there are some more tips you might need to remember to make your work as easy and interesting as it can be.

  • Since acrylics dry fast, please don’t forget to put your brushes into the water if you’re making a small pause during drawing, or rinse and dry them after use.
  • You might also need to keep a sprayer with water nearby to keep your paints on your palette moist so they won’t dry too quickly before you are even done.
  • The easiest way to mix paints is a palette knife (or even the cheapest plastic knife), not a brush. It’s flat, it’s easier to clean and no remains of unwanted colors will stay between the hairs.
  • The best palettes for acrylic are glass, porcelain, and plastic ones because they don’t absorb any paint and are very easy to wash.
  • Some acrylic paints get darker after they dry, so it might take a little while for you to experiment with that, test your materials out and get used to them to predict the result with a hundred percent accuracy.

But the best advice you’ll definitely have to follow is to enjoy the process and take your time to figure it all out and learn.

Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, since they are very easy to correct when you paint with acrylics. Besides, mistakes are absolutely okay and even very useful, because they help you learn.

So take your weapon of choice, your paint of choice and your surface of choice and create!

 

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Author: Hanna Martsynkevich
Hanna is an artist, poet and musician who lives in Minsk, Belarus. She loves food, cats, gigs and esoteric stuff. She posts the things she does on Instagram and sometimes appears on FB.