Day One- Art Materials

Learning How to Use Your Art Supplies

Paint Colors

White
Black
Yellow
Brown
Orange
Red
Purple
Indigo
Blue
Green

Long-Handled Soft Synthetic Brushes
One each.

Flat 1"
Flat 2/3"
Filbert 1/2"
Flat 1/8"
Round 1/16"
Round 1/24"

Important Art Supplies

Atomizer
Brush Bin
Drawing Board
French Box Easel, or Easel and Tackle Box
Masking Tape
Mixing Knife
Palette Knife
Pencil
Portfolio
Rag

Acrylic Paint

After several years of research and experimenting, I chose this limited palette of colors because they produce a well-rounded paint range, the best lightfast ratings and the pigments are considered nontoxic. Lightfast is how well a pigment stands up to light without fading or changing colors over many years. Acrylics are made of inorganic and organic pigment and an acrylic polymer that serves as a binder. The binder makes the pigment stick to the canvas. Pigment is the color and can be made of pretty much anything that can be ground into a fine powder. Paint manufacturers choose pigments that will remain the same color for years to come. Water is used to thin and move pigment and binder, thus it is the vehicle of the paint.

Student and Artist Quality

Spare yourself from working with student colors, you will grow out of those paints very quickly. Artist quality paints are economically sound. They yield higher pigment loads and are easier to work with. If you must go with a student quality paint, go with Grumbacher Academy, they are the best student quality I've ever worked with, and know many full time artists that use it.

Below is a list of the three most common acrylic paint manufacturers and the names of the recommended pigments. You can achieve many beautiful grays, yellows, earth colors, browns, oranges, reds, purples, pinks, blues and greens easily with these colors.

Golden and Liquitex
Titanium White
Mars Black
Hansa Yellow Opaque
Burnt Sienna
Pyrrole Orange
Quinacridone Red
Dioxazine Purple
Ultramarine Blue
Phthalo Blue
Phthalo Green

Winsor & Newton Acrylics
Titianium White
Mars Black
Azo Yellow Medium
Burnt Sienna
Pyrrole Orange
Quinacridone Red
Dioxazine Purple
Ultramarine Blue
Winsor Blue or Phthalo blue
Winsor Green or Phthalo green

The Palette Of Colors

You need 10 paint tubes to create a full range limited palette. The following paints will give you thousands of colors and help create whatever you want to achieve in painting.

White gives great solid covering power, which gets used more often to cover up mistakes than used for color mixing. You need white in order to see the pinks, blues and purples better.

Black is the least used color on palette for color mixing, but it is nice to have around. It will darken Brown, and it will make a dark green when mixed with the Yellow.

Yellow is a beautiful color that will produce mid-range and dark greens when mixed with blues. It will create oranges, ochres and other orange earth colors when mixed with Red, Orange and Brown.

Brown will give you a variety of browns, umbers, ochres, deep reds, oranges and yellows by mixing with Yellow, Red, Purple, Blue and Indigo.

Orange will produce various reds, ochres, umbers and other earth colors when mixed with Yellow, Brown, Red, Brown, Blue and Green.

Red will produce beautiful reds with Yellow and vibrant purples with Purple or Indigo. It will create earth tones with Orange, Yellow and Brown. It balances and tones down Green. Create a variety of pinks with White and Purple.

Purple produces brilliant violets, purples and pinks when mixed with White, Blue and Red. The color that neutralizes the vibrancy of Purple is Yellow.

Indigo is color that produces brilliant violets and purples when mixed with Red and Purple. Indigo produces dull greens and grays when mixed with Yellow or Orange. It makes dark grays when mixed with Brown.

Blue mixed with Yellow produces bright greens, and Blue mixed with Red gets dark purples.

Green is a brilliant high-potent green that can be used by itself. Mix this green with Yellow, Brown and Orange to create a plethora of other greens. Tone Green down with Red. Taming The Acrylic Beast

Acrylics dry fast, and dry to an insoluble state, especially if you live in a warm climate. This is both a blessing and a curse. Acrylics form a skin on the palette as they begin to dry if not properly dealt with. Here is how you can tame acrylics:

Mist-Squeeze-Mist

It's that simple!

1. Mist your palette lightly. This keeps the paint wet between the palette and the paint.

2. Squeeze a nickel-sized amount of paint onto your palette. The more you squeeze out, the slower the paint will dry. A nickel-sized amount is perfect for an average-sized painting, as very little wasted paint if you did not use that color during the painting session, and you can always squeeze more out when needed.

3. Mist the paint lightly and repeat as necessary.

Voila! Paint that'll stay wet for at least 15 minutes (then mist the paint again).

Brushes

Buying Brushes

The first set of brushes you need that will serve you well for many years are three Flats, two Filberts and two Rounds. Flats are square shaped and are used to fill in color and making lines by using the edges. Filberts have a rounded edge and are used to create softer edges and strokes, and to blend. Rounds are more pencil-like, which are used for drawing in details.

To get the proper brush sizes, take a small measuring tape or use your index finger tip, as it is the universal measurement for 1 inch, and measure where the brush meets the ferrule. A ferrule is the metal part of the brush. Get a 1 inch Flat, 3/4 inch Flat , 1/2 inch Filbert, 1/4 inch Filbert, 1/8 inch Flat, 1/16 inch Round, and a Round small enough to write like a pencil.

Buy long-handled soft synthetic brushes that have sturdy ferrules, bristles that snap back into place, and have a bit of weight to the handles.

Brushes become an extension of your arm when you use them, this is why it is so important to get high quality brushes. Good brushes can be found rather inexpensively. A good solid brush is one that has a bit of weight to it, the ferrule is firmly attached onto the bristles and handle, and the bristles are bendable and return with a springy snap. A few manufacturers are Winsor & Newton University, Utrecht Maglon, or if you can find a sale the best is Winsor & Newton Galeria, but they are hard to come by at an affordable price.

Care and Maintenance

Wash your brushes at the end of each painting session with soap and water. Dry them with a rag and lay the brushes horizontally until dry.

Always keep your brushes wet when in use!

Holding A Brush

Grip the brush with your entire hand, rest your pointer finger on the top of the handle, and allow the brush handle to rest on the inside of your wrist.

Brush Exercises

Begin by doing some brush exercises. Brush warm-ups will lower the risk of injury to your hands and shoulder, and increase your brush-stroke accuracy. You don't need any paint for this exercise. Hold the brush properly. Begin making horizontal motions until comfortable with the movement. Make vertical strokes until comfortable. Vary the strokes with both large and small movements. Make diagonal strokes from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the paper. Repeat until you are comfortable with the motions. Now do the same thing from the top right corner, down to the lower left corner. Repeat. Now make circles, small circles and large circles. Move your entire arm and wrist in both clockwise and counter clockwise circles. Now repeat the exercises and hold the brush farther back on its handle. Repeat the above exercises until you are confident with your brush strokes and comfortable with each brush.

Accessories

Easel

There are many different types of easels and all do the same thing- hold your picture. The paint box easels have the bonus of holding and storing all of your accessories andmost are very affordable. French box easels come with legs and can hold a canvas/board sizes to about 30 inches. Standing easels like the H-frame or the A-frame are used for larger work. If you choose one of these, get one that has an area to place your paints, brushes and bin, otherwise, you'll need a table or taboret. If all you need is a table easel, consider a large paint box. It looks like a wooden brief case and it has an inside easel that holds pictures up to 11 by 14 inches. The paint box will hold most all of your accessories. Toss the wooden palette on any of these box easels and get a glass palette instead.

Drawing Board

An ordinary sketching board with bull clips will do perfectly, or any board that is flat and sturdy.

Support

With acrylics, you can paint on almost any surface that is porous. Paper, canvas, wood, rocks, walls, you name it. Each one is different in texture and ease of painting. For the purpose of this book, get a good watercolor paper pad that is approximately 140 lbs. (it'll say on the cover) like Strathmore, Arches, or Canson. Watercolor paper is heavy and thick, takes acrylics perfectly, is easy to use, and stores well. Use sizes 11 by 14 inches and 18 by 24 inches, they are both large enough to work with, are portable, easily stored, and they are standard frame sizes. If you insist on canvas, get some that are high quality, and are ready to use. The staple-free edges can look good hanging without a frame. If you are going for gallery status, get the canvases with staples that can be adjusted, removed, resized.

Once you read this art workshop and go through the acrylics painting lessons, it is a good idea to purchase one very small Masonite, canvas and bristol board to play around with to see if you like them better. I do not recommend canvas panels for anything more than practice paintings because they warp.

Portfolio

A portfolio is important to have for storing your watercolor paper and art. Get one that says archival. Presentation cases comes with a three-ring binder rings and plastic sheets for your art. These are great for showing work, but it holds only a small amount of work. For the most part, I recommend a plain old archival portfolio.

Masking Tape or Clips

Get good masking tape. Use it to tape down the watercolor paper, all edges, one long tape per side. When done properly, it will produce a nice clean border around your artwork, which looks great in a presentation case. After you tape down the watercolor paper, spray it with an atomizer until moist, or use a damp sponge. Wait about 15 minutes until it has dried before applying paint. This will make the paper stay flat after removing the tape. Remove the tape by peeling it off slowly. Don't leave it on for more than a month, or else, it will rip the paper. You can use the same technique on dried acrylic to produce sharp lines. If you choose to buy the wire bound watercolor paper, all you need are clips to hold it open while you paint, when you are done, paint the edges where the clips where holding the paper for a solid looking painting.

Artist's Palette

Get a flat palette that is made of glass, sealed ceramic, butcher's tray, disposable palettes, or a polypropylene palette (this is a thermoplastic polymer, and acrylics wash off easily). Avoid plastic and wood at all costs, as acrylics will bind to plastic immediately, and will become almost impossible to remove. It becomes a headache nonetheless.

Always lightly mist the palette with the atomizer before each use to keep acrylics from drying out too quickly. Avoid plastic and wooden palettes.

Palette Knives and Painting Knives

Get a flat palette knife and a mixing knife. The palette knife cleans the palette up when paint has dried during and after a painting session. A mixing knife saves your brushes when mixing large amounts of paint.

Using The Knives

Hold the knives as you would the brushes. Pick up the paint with a mixing knife by slicing the paint and pulling it away from the pile of paint. Scoop it up as you would a spoon, then place the paint elsewhere on the palette. Do the same thing with the other colors, place them next to each other, and stir with the mixing knife in a kneading fashion. Scrape the excess paint off with the palette knife. Use the palette knife to clean away dried paint on the palette by scraping away from your body.

Water Container

Keep your brushes in the water container until you wash the paint out with soap and water. Place a drop (just a drop!) of liquid soap in the water container, this will make rinsing your brushes in between color mixing much easier and quicker. Dry brushes with the rag.

Rag

Any old rag will do to wipe brushes in between mixing colors, and to dry the brushes and palette off at the end of the painting session. If you buy a rag, wash it in warm soapy water first to take the excess dye off.

Pencil

Use the pencil for your journal and sparingly to draw in outlines on the paper or canvas. Lighter colored and transparent paint will show pencil lines. A mechanical pencil is the best multi-purpose pencil.

Atomizer

An atomizer keeps the paint, palette and painting wet. Lightly mist the paints periodically, and mist the palette before laying down paint.

Unlined Journal

A sketchbook is an important tool. You can create complete works of art just with a pencil if you have a journal. But most importantly, it will give you a place to put your rectangle, better known as thumbnail sketches. Keep your thoughts, drawings, and even paint right into your journal. A paper weight of at least 70 lbs. and is pure white is recommended. Try finding a high-quality journal, as it'll last for many years, and you get what you pay for. The size is completely up to you, and if you can't decide, get a 9 by 12 inches. For some reason, the best place to get a journal is at the book store and not the art store. Most importantly, choose a journal that you will actually use!

Your Health

Although acrylics are considered very low in toxicity compared with other mediums, it is best to protect yourself. The best way to protect yourself from known and unknown dangers is to keep the paint out of your body. Avoid eating while painting, and wash your hands before eating. If you must drink, get one of those metal cups with a lid and keep it on the other side of the room. Have some ventilation where you are painting and wash your brush in the bin, rather than crushing it in your hand.