The Sims 4 Painting Skill Guide
My most used skill is always going to be the sims 4 painting skill because you can make so much money.
Plus, you can decorate your home with adorable little paintings your sims make!
You can start painting with little overhead which is part of the reason why I love it!
What is Painting Good For?
Painting is great for so many reasons but my favourite is the amount of money you can earn from it.
You can sell masterpiece paintings for so much and you can paint more than one of these in a day when you have a high skill level.
You need this skill for the painter career which is a fun one to play through with creative sims! You can also use selling paintings to make your sim into a celebrity with Get Famous!
How to Gain The Painting Skill
There are multiple ways to gain this skill with the first being through skill books. You can get these books by clicking purchase books on a bookcase. There are three painting skill books:
- Painting Vol 1: The Fundamentals of Painting
- Painting Vol 2: The History of Painting
- Painting Vol 3: The Painting of Painting
To gain the skill you’ll start with the first volume and read that until level 4, then start the next until level 7 and then start the final book.
The other way to gain this skill is, of course, through painting on an easel. You’ll gain the skill regardless of what type of paintings you’re creating.
As your sim gains the skill you’ll unlock new types of paintings and you’ll see your paintings increase in quality which means you’ll earn more money!.
Your sims are also able to earn this skill by purchasing a digitalistic sketchpad. This works just like an easel but your sims will sit on a couch and use this like an iPad!
Best Mood to Practice Painting
The mood your sims are in can have a huge impact on how quickly they can gain skills. Since painting is a creative skill your sims are going to want to be feeling inspired so they can earn the skill faster. You can get inspired easiest by taking a thoughtful shower!
Best Traits for Artistic Sims
The traits you give your sims will have a huge impact on how quickly they can gain skills and the moods they’re in when they’re doing certain tasks. The best traits for painter sims include:
- Creative: A sim who has this trait is going to be feeling inspired more often which is the ideal mood for this skill.
- Cheerful: Sims with the cheerful trait will get happy moodlets more often. These stack with inspired to boost it!
- Art Lover: A sim with this trait have the option to admire art which can have the potential to get them inspired which is great for gaining this skill faster.
- Perfectionist: This won’t help in gaining the skill but this sim will make higher quality paintings that you can sell for money.
You should also consider the lot traits you add to your sim’s home, these can have a big impact on your sim’s skill gains for things like painting. Here’s some good options:
- Natural Light: This trait will give your sims inspired moodlets and gives a skill boost to the sims 4 painting skill
- Home Studio: This lot trait comes with The Sims 4: City Living and gives a slight boost to painting skill gains but the best part is that your paintings will come out better quality
How to Cheat The Painting Skill
Every skill we get has a cheat so you can fake that your sims spent lots of time working on gaining this skill on their own. This skill cheat is stats.set_skill_level Major_painting 10 to max the skill.
If you want your sim to have a different level of the painting skill you just change the number at the end, for example, stats.set_skill_level Major_painting 2 would give you level 2 of this skill.
Painting Skill Levels
| Skill Level | Level Rewards |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Your sim’s new skill in painting will allow her to create beautiful canvas artwork. The higher the skill level, the more advanced shapes she can paint. |
| Level 2 | Your sim can now discuss color theory with other sims. |
| Level 3 | Your sim can now create low skill pop art. |
| Level 4 | Your sim can now create low skill realism paintings, low skill abstract paintings, and medium skill classic paintings. |
| Level 5 | Your sim can now create medium skill pop art, low skill surrealism, and low skill impressionistic paintings. They can also mentor others in painting. |
| Level 6 | Your sim can now create high skill classic paintings, medium skill realism paintings, and medium skill abstract paintings. |
| Level 7 | Your sim can now create high skill pop art, medium skill surrealism, and medium skill impressionistic paintings. |
| Level 8 | Your sim can now create high skill realism paintings and high skill abstract paintings. They can now describe aesthetics in conversation with other sims. |
| Level 9 | Your sim can now create high skill surrealism and high skill impressionistic paintings. |
| Level 10 | Your sim is now a master artist! |
How to Make Money With Sims 4 Painting Skill
My favourite thing about painting is how much money you can earn from it. Creating masterpiece level paintings can earn you hundreds to thousands of dollars and have your sims never having to work a real job.
Once a painting is done your sims are able to click on them and choose sell to collector and they will immediately get money. You can also sell them in your sim’s inventory!
Creating Emotional Paintings
One of the fun parts about using the sims 4 painting skill is being able to craft emotional paintings. These can be placed on a wall and will have an aura that will give sims moodlets that match the mood of the sim when they painted it! This is available for moods like:
- Confident
- Angry
- Flirty
- Focused (Mathematical Diagrams)
- Playful
Once your sim is done creating this painting you can place it on a wall and choose to enable emotional aura. This is when the magic happens and your sims will start feeling the emotion when around the paintings!
Just think, a playful painting in a room. Tons of sims. Start telling jokes. Boom! Everyone dies of hysteria.
How to Create Masterpieces
Creating masterpieces is so good because your sims will earn more money through selling them, plus its part of the painter extraordinaire aspiration too!
There are a couple factors that matter when trying to create a masterpiece which include:
- your sim’s skill level
- the lot traits your home has
- the mood your sim is in when painting
Of course, a sim with a maxed painting skill has a higher chance of making one! Especially if they’re feeling inspired! And if you add the home studio lot trait you have an even better chance!
Painting Mentorship
When your sims are able to max out their painting skill they can start mentoring other sims. You’ll want to get another sim to start painting and click on them while controlling your artist sim and choose mentor.
If you have The Sims 4: Business & Hobbies installed in your game you can even mentor for money! A sim with a maxed painting skill can earn 430 simoleons per hour by mentoring other sims.
Adding More To Painting With DLC
When you start adding DLC to your game you unlock new, fun styles of gameplay that are so fun. There’s a bunch of packs that add good stuff to the sims 4 painting skill!
City Living
There are two really fun additions to the painting skill with city living with the first being the street gallery. This works a lot like the market place tables and lets your sims sell all of their paintings in a yard sale.
Having yard sales is fun because you never know who will show up, my sim’s first visitor was Judith Ward who bought something almost immediately because she has good taste.
With this gallery you can have yard sales where you can set your price percentage and gives sales pitches to sims who show up to sell all of the gorgeous things your sim has painted.
The other big thing in City Living is the wall and floor mural. If you place one of these your sims can create really cool murals with different themes and gain the painting skill while they do it.
These take a decently long time to create but can add some real flair to areas and make it look really beautiful.
Get Famous
There are so many ways for your sims to gain fame with The Sims 4: Get Famous from joining video game tournaments to being an actor and you can gain fame through painting too.
When you click on a finished painting you can choose sell to collector and you’ll see that it says +Fame beside it and your sims will get a small amount of fame each time they sell one.
Nifty Knitting
With The Sims 4: Nifty Knitting we got the addition of Plopsy, an Etsy style selling platform that your sims can sell their paintings on. For this, finish a painting and then choose list on plopsy. It will go into your sim’s inventory and become a pink listing until someone buys it.
Once a sim wants to purchase your item you’ll get a notification letting you know and the listing in your inventory turns blue. You then click on the listing and choose ship on plopsy and your sim will send it in the mailbox.
You can even get reviews from your customers which is a fun and silly detail!
Parenthood
With The Sims 4: Parenthood we got the addition of school projects, these are super fun and they come to your kids in two ways. You can either purchase these for your kids to do, or you’ll see your sims come home with them from time to time.
You can actually have adults assist with project and they’re able to gain some of the skill associated with that project as an adult. So, if your sim brings home a creative project, the adults can gain the sims 4 painting skill!
Discover University
There are two ways your sims can gain the skill with The Sims 4: Discover University which are awesome. The first one is by taking a skill class on either campus. These cost ยง250 to take and will gain your sim a small amount of the skill.
The other way you can have your sim earn the painting skill is with the research archive machine. The best thing about learning it with this machine is that you’ll also gain the research & debate skill at the same time!
