Sunset Acrylic Painting Techniques
Sunsets are often relatively simple but rewarding scenes to paint. This type of image does not require a lot of technical skill or experience, and because sunsets involve a lot of pretty color, most viewers find even the simplest, most rudimentary paintings of sunsets to be attractive and impressive.
Planning
The challenge of painting sunsets with acrylic paint is that the painter may find he is racing against the clock to blend the colors before the paint dries. Acrylic paint is water based and it dries very quickly. When it begins to dry, it may become thick and gummy. This means that once the paint has been laid on the canvas, it must be blended with the other colors quickly for optimal results.
Plan for your sunset by laying out all necessary colors, brushes and other paint equipment ahead of time. You will need jars filled with water, an easel, rags, a palette, and likely you will wish to have a smock or tarp laid on the ground to protect your clothes and floors. Remember that acrylic paint does not produce a significant smell or fumes (unlike oil paint) and you do not need to worry about headaches or painting in well-ventilated areas. If you are painting from a photograph, you should place the photograph somewhere easily visible.
Finally, before you begin to paint, plan the layout of the painting. You must plan where the line of the horizon appears, where the location of the sun will be, and whatever landscape will appear in front of the sun. You may wish to draw on the canvas the basic shapes that you'll be painting.
Sunset Painting
First you will paint the sunset, then you will paint whatever comes in front of the sunset (the landscape). Start by watering down the paint that you will use for the sunset. With a wide, flat brush, pick up the color that you'll paint at the top of the canvas. For most sunsets, this will be a blue or a magenta. As the sun goes down, the yellows and oranges in the sky will deepen to a magenta and blue, eventually becoming the dark of night. Therefore, in most sunsets the oranges and yellows will be seen at the bottom, closest to the sun, while the darker colors will be seen at the top, chasing the lighter colors down with the sun itself.
The first layer of paint on the canvas will be a thin wash, and color will build over time in layers. Watering down the paints will allow the colors to blend easily and dry a little more slowly.
Landscape Painting
Once you've painted the sunset and it is at least close to finished, you will need to paint the landscape that appears in front of the sunset. Whether this is a mountain or a beach, whatever appears in front of the sunset will become a silhouette. Most of the paint you will need after you've painted the colors of the sunset will be dark browns, blues and blacks.
Wait until the sunset colors have dried. Then, with a fine detail brush, begin to pain the shapes that appear in front of the sunset. Since these shapes will be in silhouette, they will be flat dark shapes and nothing more.
