easy painting ideas for beginners: You want to start painting art?

Art brings color to our lives! Start painting with these easy painting ideas for beginners.

Step into the wonderful world of color, expression and vibrancy. The beauty of painting is expressing ourselves and the world around us. Every painting is as unique as the artist who paints it.

Let your inner artist flow free and kick-start your art journey with enjoyable painting ideas, from landscapes to everyday objects.

The joy and freedom of painting!

Step into the Art World: Easy Painting Ideas for Beginners

Our painting journey begins with understanding the fundamentals of painting. The three basics of painting art that all artists use are values, color and composition.

values

Values are one of the most important things for a beginning artist to learn. They are the light or darkness of each part of the painting.

They are the backbone of good artwork. Without a good contrast of values our paintings will fall flat.

One of the first lessons I had as a beginner was to do a painting with just one color and white. That was a good experience that has carried me over many years of painting.

Colors can be light or dark values.

color

Silhouettes are easy painting ideas for beginners. Choose a limited number of colors for the painting.

The recommended colors for any artist are a warm and cool version of the six rainbow colors. Artists use warm and cool colors to shape objects.

Let the sunrise on your art journey.

We can express our feelings and intentions with color.  Different colors have different meanings.

composition

Composition is the way the elements of the painting are arranged. A good composition draws people to look at our paintings.

Most paintings do not have the main subject in the center.

However, the painting below was painted with a prophetic intent that put the subject in the center. The clouds and the water all lead the viewer to the subject.

Prophetic Paintings

What do we need to begin painting art?

Choose your painting medium.

Oil paint is made with linseed oil and color pigments. They are painted on stretched canvas or canvas boards. Use odorless mineral spirits for clean-up. Most of the oil colors are slow drying.

There is a modern solution, alkyds. They dry much faster because their color pigments are mixed with alkyd resin. They are handled and look just like oils. They have been my 'oil paints' for decades.

An extremely fast drying paint is acrylics. Their color pigments are mixed with a polymer binder. They also are painted on canvas and clean-up with water.

Watercolors are made with gum arabic and cleaned up with water. They may be painted on watercolor paper, watercolor canvas or Aquabord.

Get the paper or canvas for your selected medium. Use the brushes labeled for your paint.

We can begin painting on a budget.

Your Art Journey Starts Here: Easy Painting Ideas for Beginners

Whether it's a capturing the beauty of nature or a vibrant still life, each painting theme has its own charm. The possibilities for painting are virtually endless.

Five classic painting ideas for the beginning artist are:

• landscapes
• animals
• still life paintings
• portraits
• and abstract art.

landscapes are good painting ideas for beginners

Landscapes with spacious skies, distant mountains or peaceful lakes are a brilliant painting idea for beginners.

Paint a mountain landscape.

Landscapes are probably the most popular painting subject.

They get us thinking about perspective, color harmony, the foreground, middle ground, and background parts of a painting. Landscapes are a great way to start our artistic journey.

Nature has a universal appeal that guarantees our painting’s appeal, whether it is our first painting or one of many.

Paint your favorite lake.

Artists can record history.

Artist Tip: Nature has an infinite range of colors. We may want to change the colors for a different time of day. The colors are up to the artist.

Just imagine what we could do with either of the landscapes above. We could change the time of day to a sunrise or warm sunset colors.

We could dress up the barn with spring green leaves on the trees or paint the grassy field full of wild flowers.

The only limit is our imagination. That's the joy of painting!

It's fun to let our imagination run free like the dolphin painting below.

Dolphins "Flying Free"

plants and flowers

Try a stem of Pussy Willow.

Large trees can make some very majestic paintings.

How about painting one flower?

A single flower could spark up the room's decor with a modern touch.

animals are fun to paint

Paintings are fun to share!

Animals are our constant companions, be it our domestic animals or the birds singing to us when we walk down the street.

Birds with their lively activities are good painting subjects for beginners. We may want to paint some birds on our greeting cards.

The neighbor's cat got stuck up in my front yard tree. They had to get a ladder to help her down.

Guess what my neighbor got for Christmas?

A painting of her cat in the tree. She still comes to my yard, but no ladder is needed.

explore still life painting

Still life paintings are a classic favorite that hold easy painting ideas for beginners. Everyday things like fruit and flowers can turn into exciting subjects through the artist's brush.

Still lifes help us understand perspective, form, color relationships, light and shadows.

The secret is to record the ordinary with our paint brush.

We can learn a lot by painting still lifes.

portraits can be challenging

Portraits can be used for expressing emotions or telling a story.

We let our inner self flow through our brushes. That's the secret of painting.

The friends below enjoying their time together is precious. It's an easy idea for beginners because it has limited colors and there are no faces to paint.

Painting ideas come from the artist's heart.

abstract paintings

Abstract art is all about colors and shapes. We let our ideas and feelings flow through the brush.

We can create whimsical or dramatic pieces with bold colors and strokes. Abstract paintings can be both fun and stress relieving.

Beginning artists can have fun playing with paint and colors and be learning at the same time.

The painting below is not exactly an abstract, but it was a joy to paint. I put on a bunch of colors on the board. Then I used a damp brush to pull out the old building that had pelican sitting on it. That's the beauty of painting watercolor on Aquabord.

Painting doesn't have to be serious.

Have fun with your painting!

Dive into Art: A Guide to Painting

All the beautiful artwork we admire is a result of the artists' patience and practice.

The best advice for beginning artists is to practice. Each stroke, each sketch, each painting takes us a step closer to our goals. Our tenth painting will look noticeably different from the first one.

Begin your art journey with these easy painting ideas for beginners.

Every painting will not be a masterpiece - and that's okay. Learn from what works or did not work, but never belittle yourself.

Dive deeper into the world of painting art and the wonder of colors and imagination.

Let the canvas be your world, and the brush, your expression!