How to Paint

Difficulty: 3/5
Colours: Titanium white, phthalo blue, mars black, bright red, medium yellow, violet
Brushes: Medium flat brush, detail round brush

Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror was a rather playful exercise in colour! Some described it as a “paint-by-number” kind of activity, which is a good way to describe how I went about trying to reproduce it.

The first step was to actually figure out what’s going on (“Is that an arm? A neck?“), then identify the big shapes and key lines that create all the smaller shapes. The circle is a repetitive form here. It’s all about being organised – a solid sketch makes the rest of the painting much easier.

If you’re using acrylics, it’s all about filling in sections by colour so that you don’t run into the problem of dried up paint (especially if you’ve mixed a colour instead of using it from a tube!). Picasso’s colours are flat, so there’s no need for any blending or tonal gradients – simply paint within the lines. The black outlines at the end will cover any messy edges up!