Acrylic Painting Process: Essential supplies

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Now that you have setup a place to paint (see Setup post), you need to get some paint and a few other essential supplies.

Acrylic paint is expensive, some colors more so than others. In order to get started, you need 5 colors and a mixing medium, some white acrylic gesso, and something to paint on. I recommend the following: Titanium White paint (this is an opaque color and used for mixing as well as a stand alone color, black (bone, ivory, or carbon), quinacridone magenta, hansa yellow medium, and Pthalo blue (green shade). An alternative to these 3 are Cyan blue, Cyan yellow, and Cyan magenta. These are available through Dick Blick (see below for link). You can create just about any color with these five. the other 2 essential products are white acrylic gesso and acrylic matte medium. The gesso is the foundation of most acrylic paintings and white canvas panels are pre-primed with it. It may also be mixed with other stuff to create some interesting effects (later posts). Matte medium is almost always mixed with the pure paint to extend it and improve the flow. Unlike watercolor paint, acrylics are never thinned with water except in small amounts. Too much water affects adhesion and has a grainy, unattractive appearance when painted.

Storage is an issue for artists so consider this when deciding to paint on paper or canvas panels. I am assuming that these will used for experimentation and exploring color. For more serious work, the quality of canvas panels (perhaps linen) will be more of a consideration and a lot more expensive. I recommend getting canvas packs (16 x 20) at a craft store with a discount coupon. If you decide on paper, Get a large pad of drawing, watercolor or mixed media paper. A coat or 2 of gesso will be brushed onto the paper before painting. I have added some other items in the photo which I feel are essential for me (really not necessary though). These items are thick graphite stick, graphite pencil, and “ArtGraf” carbon disc, water-soluble. These products are great for initial mark making. My favorite resource for quality art products is Dick Blick. I have been buying supplies from them for over 30 years. The best brand for acrylic paint (my opinion) is “Golden”. Other decent ones are Liquitex, M. Graham, Matisse and I’m sure there are more. That being said there are some really cheap options for just having fun and exploring color possibilities. The next post will be about optional supplies.