Just started playing with acryclics, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt...

Mixing paints: A paint knife is a pretty decent way.

Gradients: You need to work wet in wet. Good thing is you can actually thin acrylics with water so they don't dry super-fast.

Here's an experiment with gradients: http://tweetphoto.com/26115899

Another one, using crosshatch instead of gradients: http://tweetphoto.com/26116084

Hope that helps, and have fun!

June 8, 2010 at 4:57 PM James McNeill said...

Thanks for the tips!

I asked some of my artist coworkers about acrylics. They recommended working in monochrome for starters, to have one less thing to worry about. You can apparently use the underpainting technique to get to a full-color painting from there.
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