Sunsets can be fun to paint. They don’t have to be difficult. The great thing about mini canvases is that you can do simple pictures that are fairly fast to paint.
To paint an easy sunset on a mini canvas you prime your canvas. Mix your chosen sunset colors. Start with the sky, paint that and then paint the foreground.
Below I have created a very simple sunset to give you the process of painting on a mini canvas so that you can create your own mini sunset paintings. You can use this painting as a guide or design something different
How to Paint A Vibrant Sunset On A Mini Canvas
Materials Needed For this Project
Paints used:
- Quinacridone Violet (A deep pink)
- Ultramarine Blue
- Cadmium Yellow
- Titanium White
Smaller brushes suitable for acrylic painting.
A mini Canvas 6×4 inches or smaller. Mine was 3×4 inches (7.5cmx10cm)
You can see the materials and paints used for the mini Canvas on this Amazon page Mini Sunset Paints and Materials (affiliate link)
Ideally you should prime your canvas with white or clear gesso if you have any. If not paint a layer of white titanium and let it dry.
For this picture we are painting wet on wet for the sky. There is only a small amount of mixing. Get out all of your paint colors and put them on your palette before you start and mix your purple.
Mix a dark purple from your pink and blue (do not use red for this. Getting the right red can be difficulty and may turn your picture a murky purple).
- Paint your purple onto your canvas one strip across the top.
- Take your pink unmixed and paint a stripe on the canvas
- Continue down most of the canvas with your pink.
- Use your titanium white and paint over the bottom part of your pink.
5 & 6 Now blend in your colors to soften the edges.
7. Use a soft blender brush to blend your colors more. Start with the lightest color and move upwards across your canvas. This stops the dark color from dragging down.
8 & 9. If you are happy with your color graduation you can leave it here. I wasn’t happy with mine so I added more darker purple at the top and re-blended it.
Leave your painting to dry before doing the bottom part.
As this is a small painting and we are keeping it simple I am only doing two layers of foreground.
The foreground is dark but if things are in the distance even when dark they can still be hazy and not as dark as the foreground.
10. Mix a very dark purple black using your pink blue and yellow. Add this as bushes to your picture. You want it too look soft and hazy so allow the color from behind to show through and do no paint too thickly.
11. Then add more dark color to the front lower down so it makes a second layer of darkness. This should be more solid with little light showing through.
12. Add your tree branches.
13. Add your leaves Just press your brush to make small leaf marks across your branches. A Brush with stiff ends works well for this if you have one.
14. Add any finishing touches you want to complete your picture.
Mini Canvas materials list on amazon Mini Sunset Paints and Materials (Affiliate link).