This colorful, shiny beetle painting perfect for beginners and it is really simple to paint with acrylic paints! The bright pink background contrasts with the blues and greens of the beetle, making it really pop out from the canvas. This would be a great painting to create for a paint party, or to make to brighten up a wall in your home.
I have written the step by step instructions below, explaining exactly how I created this colorful beetle painting. If you’d prefer to watch a video of the process, then you can watch it on my Youtube Channel below:
If you’d like to watch the full length video in real time, it is available on my Patreon, alongside all of my art videos and tutorials that I have ever made. I also explain all of the paint colors and other materials that I used to create each painting.
Let's paint this beetle!
You will need:
- Acrylic paints (pink, white, black, blue, green and yellow)
- Paintbrushes
- Canvas (I used 11″x14″ canvas)
- Palette knife (optional – for splatters)
Step 1:
Sketch out the outline of the beetle onto your canvas. Then paint a bright pink background with acrylic paints and a wide paintbrush. Try not to add the thicker paint over your pencil lines, to make sure you can still see the outline of the beetle.
If you want to add splatters of paint to your background, have a look at this post to learn the best way to splatter paint!
Or watch this video below to learn how to add splatters of paint to your background:
Step 2:
Mix up a shade of dark blue paint and paint it around the edge of one of the sections of the beetle’s body. The beetle that I have drawn has two sections at the bottom, one section at the top and then a head.
Step 3:
Fill in the rest of the first section of the beetle’s body, creating a gradient from dark blue, to light blue, to lime green paint. This will give the beetle a metallic effect and make it look even more colorful.
Step 4:
Repeat the same techniques with the same color paints to fill in the next section of the scarab beetle’s body.
Step 5:
Continue to fill in the rest of the beetle’s body with acrylic paints, continuing with the technique of adding dark blue paint on the outer edge, and getting lighter and brighter towards the centre.
Repeat this same technique to paint the beetle’s head.
Step 6:
Use the same color paints to paint the beetle’s legs. I usually use Liquitex acrylic paints as I find them easy to work with and the colors are always nice and bright. Join my Patreon to find out more details about the materials and colors I use.
Step 7:
Use the same color paints to paint the antennae. Then use black and white paint to paint the beetle’s eyes. Use a smaller paintbrush for this as the area you are painting is quite small.
Step 8:
To finish your beetle painting, just fill in any blank areas and neaten everything up until you are happy with it. I wanted my painting to have a lot of texture, so I left the brushstrokes nice and thick and didn’t blend them together. However, if you want your beetle to have a smoother appearance, then just blend the brush strokes together as you are painting.
I hope you enjoyed this easy beetle art tutorial for beginners! If you’d like to get my top 10 tips for painting colorful animals, then just join my mailing list below:
