5 Steps to practice acrylic painting | Ganesha painting for beginners

Acrylic painting on a canvas is not easy if the process of painting is slow. The painting has to be really quick and fast. otherwise your rending will not be consistent. To maintain the speed, one should have a clarity on what needs to be achieved.

I wanted to explain how have I made the below painting in simple steps.

A step by step process of acrylic painting of Ganesha.

Ganesha Painting Process

01. Choose your medium and materials

Firstly, decide on the canvas type, size, color mediums and prepare with brushes and other needed tools. Since I already knew what I am going to paint, I have personally created my canvas board by stretching the canvas to my own frame. My colors brand is 'Basics' acrylics. Then I prepared with my large size brushes including gel mediums.

Then taken 3 colors to outline the sketch on the canvas and put some portion of color tubes on palette. Take the white mate color and wash out the canvas.

02. Outline the shape of your art

I started sketching the outline with a lighter color (yellow) and tweaked with a bit darker color (orange) paint. Then used a darkest color (Red) for smaller details to not miss while painting.

This step is essential if any object or scenery is planned for the painting. If the painting is completely abstract and going with the mood or flow, this step can be avoided.

03. Fill the base level colors on the subject

Here I have taken the color palette again and pasted some colors to suite my expectation. I wanted a darker and cool versions of colors to be applied for the main object as I wanted to highlight the ornaments. Ornaments are usually in golden shade colors, which are typically bright and warm colors. Therefore my warm colors will be highlighted on the cool and darker colors.

This process should be really quick and fast. The out put need not look polished. Just brush your canvas to fill the colors, you might ignore sharp edges and fine tuned curved at this phase. The ideas is to apply basic colors of your requirement.

At this level, you should also apply some background color which should elevate your key subject. Many different techniques can be used to create some nice textures.

Painting process

04. Detailed painting and fill colors

This is the time where you apply second level of colors to your painting. This will probably take some time as one needs to work on primary details. 

I have taken, little darker tone of my colors here and started applying my second level color quote to my painting. I have added a little bit of flow medium to my colors to move my brushing smoothly. If this medium is not applied your color on the palette dries quicker and you will find hard to paint rest of the part. This is most important part to keep your color lubricant.

The darker variant will overlay the base level quoting and improves the pigment of the painting. While painting this, I have taken some lighter and darker tones of each color and smudged with the medium tones to bring some depth.

05. Finish the Painting with Highlights and Shades

By now, your painting looks almost complete, however some details required to bring sharpness to the painting.

I have added 80% of white and 20% of relevant medium tone color of the subject for highlights and 70% of black and 30% of relevant medium tone for shadows then mixed well.

Firstly, I have painted the shadows wherever is needed. Then taken the highlights and given touch-ups on edges, embossed parts etc. This made the painting look more sharper and detailed.

These are the five common and simple steps to practice acrylic painting on canvas. Which results great and fills positive motivation for your next paintings. Do not worry if your painting doesn't look realistic or miss on some details or shape.

You will achieve better results after continues practice of paintings.