Deciding what to paint on a canvas is the hardest part of a blank one. These ten are genuinely achievable on a first or second attempt, arranged roughly easiest first, with the method for each rather than just the idea. All of them work in acrylic, which is the sensible medium to start with: it dries fast, cleans up with water, and covers its own mistakes.
All of them work in acrylic, which is the sensible medium to start with: it dries fast, cleans up with water, and covers its own mistakes.
1. A two-color sunset
The best first painting there is, because the gradient does the work.
Paint a band of yellow across the lower third, a band of orange above it, and a band of deep pink or red above that, leaving each band touching the next. While all three are still wet, run a clean, slightly damp wide brush horizontally along the joins until they blend into each other. Work quickly — acrylic gives you a few minutes.
Let it dry, then add a black horizon line and a few silhouetted shapes. It looks far better than the effort involved.
2. Tree silhouettes
Build on the sunset. Once the sky is completely dry, load a small round brush with black and paint a trunk from the ground up, letting it taper. Branch off it, tapering again at each split, and let the branches get thinner and more erratic toward the tips.
The trick is that real branches are never symmetrical and never even. Vary the angles, let some branches be longer than others, and leave gaps. A perfectly balanced tree looks fake immediately.
3. Paint pouring
No brush control required at all, which is why it suits people who think they cannot paint.
Mix each color with a pouring medium — not water, which weakens the paint — until it flows like cream. Layer the colors in a cup, tip it onto a level canvas, and tilt the canvas to spread them. Work over a tray, because it will run off the edges.
Choose colors that sit near each other on the color wheel. Opposites will meet and turn brown. Our guide to fluid acrylic and pouring covers the ratios.
4. Splatter and splash
Thin the paint slightly, load a stiff brush, and flick it at the canvas by dragging your thumb across the bristles. Different distances and consistencies give different marks — fine spray from thin paint far back, heavy blobs from thick paint close up.
It looks better with restraint than with abandon: two or three colors on a plain ground, and a lot of empty canvas left alone. Cover the floor.
5. Balloons
Simple shapes, and a genuinely useful exercise in making something look round rather than flat.
Paint each balloon as a flat oval first. Once dry, add a curved shadow along one side in a darker version of the same color, and a small white highlight on the opposite side. That is all it takes for a circle to read as a sphere — and the same trick works on fruit, eyes, and anything else round.
Keep the light coming from the same direction on every balloon. Inconsistent light is the thing that gives a beginner painting away.
6. Flowers
Forgiving, because nobody is checking whether your petals are the correct shape.
Start with the background so you are not cutting around the flowers later. Then block in each bloom as a simple mass of color, add a darker tone where the petals turn away from the light, and put the lightest touches on the edges facing the light. Stems and leaves last.
One large flower filling the canvas is easier and more striking than a bunch of small ones.
7. Abstract shapes
Genuinely easy only if you give yourself constraints. "Anything goes" is paralysing; a rule is freeing.
Try this: three colors and white, only straight-sided shapes, and no shape may touch the edge of the canvas. Or: one color in five different values, horizontal bands only. The result will look considered rather than accidental, which is the difference between abstract painting and a mess.
8. Atmospheric landscape
A little more ambitious, and the payoff is large.
The rule that makes landscapes work is atmospheric perspective: the further away something is, the paler, bluer and less contrasted it becomes. So distant hills are soft blue-gray, the middle ground is greener and clearer, and the foreground is warm, dark and sharp.
Paint sky first, then the furthest hills, then forward. Get that progression right and it will read as depth even if nothing else is accurate.
9. Cityscape at night
Easier than a daytime one, because darkness hides the detail.
Paint a graduated dark sky. Once dry, block the buildings in as flat black rectangles of varying heights, overlapping slightly so some sit in front of others. Then add windows as small squares of warm yellow, lit at random rather than in neat grids, with whole floors dark.
The randomness is what sells it. Add a reflection below if there is water.
10. A view through something
A window frame, a doorway, an arch. Painting a scene through an opening gives you an instant sense of depth, and the frame itself does a lot of the compositional work for you.
Paint the outside view first, across the whole canvas. Let it dry, then paint the frame over the top in a dark, flat color. The contrast between a dark near frame and a light distant view creates the depth on its own.
Which paint to use
Acrylic is the right starting point: fast-drying, water-cleanup, opaque enough to correct anything, and inexpensive.
Oil stays wet for days, which allows blending acrylic cannot match, at the cost of solvents, smell and long waits. Worth trying later.
Watercolor is worth one caution here: it does not work on ordinary canvas. Canvas is primed to repel water, so the paint beads and lifts. Watercolor needs paper, or a canvas prepared with a special watercolor ground.
A few things that help
- Tone the canvas first. A thin wash of a mid-tone over the white, left to dry, means any gap reads as shadow rather than a hole — and it stops the white glare that makes every color look wrong.
- Work background to foreground. It is far easier than cutting a background in around a finished subject.
- Test colors on scrap and let them dry. Acrylic dries slightly darker than it looks wet.
- Stop earlier than you want to. More paintings are ruined by overworking than by being left alone.
If deciding is still the obstacle
For a lot of people the problem is not brushwork, it is choosing the subject and the colors. A paint by numbers kit removes both, so what you are practicing is brush control and patience — and those are the parts that transfer to anything you paint afterward.
You can see the designs in the shop, turn a photo of your own into a custom canvas, or look through the customer gallery.
