What is Reddit's opinion of Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings: Pick up the skills * Put on the paint * Hang up your art?

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my suggestion is to find a small painting group run by a real artist. i pay $65.00 for 6 once a week sessions that go 2 1/2 to 3 hours. the artist will critique your work, give you suggestions, and sometimes do a demo or even paint on your painting to show you haow things should be done. the other thing to do is findsome books at the library and see step by step instructions. here is one i borrowed from local library, https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Paint-Acrylics-Small-Paintings/dp/1631590561

>The initial conflict is that creative things are dangerous

YES. I have so much trouble with this question! What I have found helps is doing lessons out of a book. I know it seems silly, but if I can do a lesson out of something like Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings, I can think of the thing I am doing as "a lesson" and not "aa creative thing". But once the lesson is over, I can tell myself "well, here I have been messing around with paint and nothing bad happened, so I can keep playing with it and nothing bad will happen" -- and that seems to help calm me enough to slide into being creative.

The trick is, it needs to be a lesson in the material I want to use. So a watercolor lesson if I want to work mostly with watercolors, etc. But that helps a lot.

I still don't know what I'm doing either, but I've been working through the super-accessible and helpful book "Learn to Paint Acrylics in 50 Small Paintings" by Mark Daniel Nelson: http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Paint-Acrylics-Small-Paintings/dp/1631590561

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1631590561/

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First projects are basic but it has some neat-o ones too.

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Next project in it is to paint a piece of toast :)

I started teaching myself acrylic painting about a year ago (didn't think I had an artistic bone in my body) and loved Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings. It felt easier to experiment and not be afraid of something looking bad because the paintings were small. I bought canvas pads and cut them into four rectangles. (So far I've liked Fredrix the best, because they blend the paint significantly better than the other 2-3 brands I tried.)

I also like this book because it introduces you to a range of painting types and styles: landscape, still-life, abstract, portrait, city-scape, impressionist, etc. And I love that it slowly increases the complexity, so I could see myself getting better as I practiced new techniques. I am definitely an achievement-chaser, and this book scratched that itch and played into that motivation really well.

When I finished the book, I started looking up images of things I wanted to paint (mostly nature scenes) and have kept doing them in the same small size. I only finally just now bought canvas and am thinking about bigger scenes to paint! I find this surprisingly helpful for developing more techniques because if I have a goal (I want to paint this waterfall!) then I can go out and look for videos on that, and honestly just do trial and error until I figure it out.

There's also some great youtube channels out there. The ones I've liked are:

Lachri Fine Art - Pros: lots of tutorials, info and review on materials, and discussion of different mediums. She also has a great video on which materials matter for spending more money on or not. She taught me about paintbrush care and that a cookie sheet + tin foil = perfectly fine palette. Cons: She uses stuff like an airbrush that I don't have/want, so I can't copy that technique. And if you don't like her style, you'll be less enthused about the tutorials. This was the first tutorial I tried and I loved how it came out. It doesn't require a lot of advanced techniques.

Mural Joe - Pros: Super interesting discussion of certain techniques (like drawing waves and things being darker when they're closer) and I love that he discusses the physics principles behind this stuff. And it's a nice confidence boost that you don't need fancy paints to get amazing effects. Cons: He does murals, so it's harder to apply to smaller projects. And I still find waves really difficult to make them look realistic.

Will Kemp Art School Pros: He taught me the helpfulness of a colored ground (not just using the white paper). Has some free tutorials. Cons: I wasn't a huge fan of his particular style, and wasn't using a lot of the same colors his tutorials use. Also, his tutorials rely a lot on your drawing skill, and I SUCK at drawing.

John Magne Lisondra Pros: I love his channel because in watching the time lapse, it makes these huge, complicated projects seem more doable to me. I haven't used them as tutorials, but more as inspiration and because it's interesting to see how artists work and layer their paintings. Cons: Probably hard to use an as actual tutorial.

Bonus: Color Mixing Video - This is with oil paints, but the same principle apply. This gave me a helpful start for how to approach color mixing in practice. I really like the simple algorithm of: does this color need to be darker or lighter? And does it need to be bluer, redder, or yellower? That's it!

Double Bonus: Boss Ross - I know he uses oil paints! But (a) he's so soothing to listen to and (b) with a good canvas/canvas pad and some slow-dry medium, you can mimic at least some of his techniques. Cons: the palette knife work is probably going to be hard, so maybe no mountains.