In February, I wanted to take a little break from the all-in technical stuff and do some painting. I had planned to do 3 but only got around to 2. The third I still have in my mind, but it’s not quite dreamed up yet.
Some quick lessons:
- Painting is really cheap and fun
- I used acrylic paint because I thought it would be the easiest (and cheapest) to learn with
- I expected this to be really hard and demoralizing, but right away it was fun
- Don’t take it too seriously
- Plastic bags around a notebook make a great painter’s pallet
- You don’t really need an easel
- If you don’t have clothes you can afford to get dirty… just wear some sweatpants + shirts inside out
- Most of my learnings were focused on acrylic paint…
- You’ll want lots of white to brighten up the other colors
- Get some cheap pencils to give yourself some guidelines
- Add water to your paint for backgrounds, easier to spread
- Airplane bottles make great brush holders (lots of empties around where I live, sadly)
John Rhoads 