Easy Sunset Painting: A Step-by-Step First Acrylic Canvas

A sunset is a kind subject for a first canvas. The sky is a handful of soft color bands, the land is a flat dark shape, and nothing has to be drawn accurately. If a band ends up wider or pinker than you planned, it still looks like a sunset.

This easy sunset painting uses four colors plus white on a small canvas panel. You paint the sky in one go while it is wet, let it dry, then add dark hills and three small trees on top.

What you need

• A canvas panel, about 8 x 10 in (20 x 25 cm), placed upright
• Titanium white, ultramarine blue, magenta, primary yellow and burnt umber
• A 1 in (2.5 cm) flat brush for the sky
• A medium filbert or round brush for the sun and hills
• A small round brush for the trees
• A palette, two water jars and paper towels

Most bought panels are already primed, so you can paint straight onto one. If you are unsure what to buy, the guide to acrylic painting surfaces compares panels, stretched canvas and paper. Wear old clothes, because dried acrylic does not wash out of fabric.

Mix the sky colors first

Acrylic dries quickly, so have every sky color ready before the brush touches the canvas. Mix generous piles, each about the size of a large coin:

• Violet: ultramarine blue with a little magenta and a touch of white.
• Pink: mostly white with a little magenta.
• Orange: yellow with a small touch of magenta, then a little white to soften it.
• Yellow: yellow with a little white.

Add the magenta to the yellow in tiny amounts. It is a strong color, and the orange turns red very quickly.

Paint the sky bands

With a pencil, make a small mark on each side of the panel about a quarter of the way up. That is your horizon. The sky fills everything above it.

1. Dampen the flat brush and blot it. Paint the violet across the top third of the sky with long horizontal strokes.
2. Wipe the brush on a paper towel, rinse and blot. Paint the pink band below the violet, letting the two just touch.
3. Paint the orange band below the pink, then the yellow band down to the horizon. Wipe and rinse the brush between colors.
4. Now blend. With a clean, barely damp brush, stroke side to side along each join until the hard line disappears. Wipe the brush before moving to the next join.

Work from top to bottom and keep moving. The pink band has a job: it keeps the violet away from the yellow, which would turn to a dull brown if the two met. The guide to painting a smooth gradient covers this banding method in more detail, and how to blend acrylic paint explains what to do when the paint starts to drag.

Add the sun and the reflected strip

For the sun, mix white with a small touch of yellow. Using the filbert or round brush, paint a circle low in the yellow band, roughly the width of your thumb. If the sky is still wet, the edge will soften slightly, which suits a low sun. Then, with a nearly dry brush, drag a little of the same pale mix outward into the sky around it for a glow.

Below the horizon marks, fill the remaining strip with horizontal strokes of the leftover sky colors: yellow nearest the horizon, then orange and pink toward the bottom edge. This reads as still water or a flat field catching the light. Keep it simple and slightly darker than the sky above.

How to rescue a streaky sky

Streaks and patches usually mean the paint began to dry while you were still blending. Going back into half-dry acrylic lifts it and makes things worse, so stop.

Let the sky dry completely. Thin layers are touch-dry in roughly 10 to 20 minutes. Then mix the colors again and repeat the bands as a second coat, working a little faster and with slightly more paint on the brush. A second coat nearly always looks smoother and richer than the first, and acrylics usually dry slightly darker, which deepens the color further.

Paint the hills and trees

Wait until the sky is dry to the touch. Then mix a dark from ultramarine blue and burnt umber, in roughly equal parts. It should look almost black, with a slight blue cast.

1. With the filbert or round brush, paint a low, rolling line of hills across the panel, starting at the horizon marks. Vary the height so the outline is not symmetrical.
2. Fill in solidly below the line. You can cover the whole reflected strip for a simple dark foreground, or leave a band of it showing beneath a nearer, lower hill.
3. Switch to the small round brush. For each tree, paint a thin vertical trunk rising from the hilltop, then dab short strokes outward on both sides, wider at the bottom and narrowing to a point at the top.
4. Paint three trees of different heights. Place two close together and one apart, and keep them away from the sun.

If a hill or tree goes wrong, wipe it off at once with a damp paper towel. The dry sky underneath will stay put. If the dark has already dried, repaint that patch of sky, let it dry, and try the shape again.

Finishing and optional varnish

Paint the edges of the panel dark or carry the sky colors around them. Check the silhouettes for thin spots where the sky shows through and give them a second coat.

Wipe the excess paint off your brushes with a paper towel before rinsing, so less goes down the drain, and wash them before the paint dries in the bristles.

Once you are comfortable with this sky, try a daytime version with clouds. The guide on how to paint a sky in acrylic is a natural next step.