Traditional painting..

#4

I have recently been thinking the same thing :smiley: I bought a canvas for it too and new paintbrushes.

I’m hoping to try out Oils :slight_smile:

#5

If you are using oils and turpentine make (expletive deleted) sure you have good ventilation in your workspace. If you don’t, or have family who live with you, you might consider acrylics as an initial investment. Clean up with water, dry fast, bright colors.

For an example of what you can do with acrylics, check out michaelwhelan.com - he’s used them almost exclusively for most of his career.

D’Arcy

#6

Well, if you’re starting out, the simple thing would be to go for getting the most out of your money I guess. I’d go with cheaper acrylics. They dry faster and cost less both in time and money.

I never touch the stuff anylonger though, I make a terrible mess everytime.

#7

If you do go with acrylics, remember that they dry very quickly, keep water handy at all times and clean those brushes.

If you let acrylic dry properly on a brush, you ain’t getting it off easily…

-Steve

#8

there’s a type of oil paint that is supposed to be more managable and drys quicke, I forget the name think it begins with A…

you could try thoughs :smiley:

#9

alkyd gel medium

#10

If you paint in acrylics, don’t believe the crap about it being totally non-toxic compared to oils or other mediums–acrylics is essentially a plastic medium, and it gives off formaldehyde fumes. It’s always a good idea to have good ventilation when painting with just about any medimum (except maybe watercolor and gouache).

#11

Thanks alot for great responses! :slight_smile:
I might try out acrylics then… I checked out Whelan’s site, pretty amazing stuff! I have tried it out once before about 6-7 years ago, i think i can do much more with it now…

Anything the newbie always does wrong first time with acrylics?

Any further thoughts, tips and techniques on acrylics is very much appriciated! :slight_smile:

Thanks alot guys!

#12

I would highly suggest you actually first buy just low-grade/medium grade primary/supliment colors (blue, yellow, red, white–you can mix just about all the colors you need with them in the beginning stage) in multiple mediums and try them all out. Keep your watercolor and acrylic brushes seperate from your oil brushes–or make sure you wash the oil out VERY thoroughly if you’re to use brushes that’s touched oil paint/mediums for watercolors/acrylics. Just buy some cheap brushes in the beginning, since you’re not even sure if you’ll stick with traditional painting. Get a small, medium, and large brush for each medium you’ll be painting in (you can use the same brushes for all the water-based mediums, so you can get away with one set of oil brushes and one set of water-based brushes). You might want to add a palette knife to your oil brush set as it’s a very expressive and practical tool for oils. For oils, get flats–not filberts or rounds or fans–you don’t need those yet, although you should probably get one small sized sable round (many use sable watercolor brushes for detailing in oils). For acrylics, if you find that they dry too quickly, you can get a tube of retarder which slows their drying time. You can also keep a water spray bottle nearby so you can spray your mixing palette to slow drying down. Sealing unused paint on the palette in an air-tight box with wet papertowel covering the palette, then putting it in the fridge (NOT the freezer) will help keep them fresh/wet overnight. You can do the same with oils (but without the wet papertowl). Watercolor and gouache you don’t need to worry about, as they can come in cakes and are water-soluble anyway.

NEVER let acrylic paint dry on the brush–it’ll be a nightmare if you do. Buy a good brush soap–all art stores have them, and if you abuse your brushes, use warm water and get the brush soap in the hair in a thick lather–let it sit overnight and then rinse off next day–should take care of most abused brushes.

After trying each painting medium, you’ll have a much better idea of what you like and don’t like about each, and that’ll broaden your horizon. You should google as much info as you can beforehand and read about each medium, the various techniques you can use with them, and look at lots of examples of works done in those mediums.

Once you have painted with your basic kits for a while, you’ll natually come to a conclusion of which medium you love the most. Then, I would suggest you get a few really good books on the medium and start studying it in depth. If you feel you’re ready to get serious by then, you can also start spending money on higher quality paint, brushes, mediums, easel, canvas, paper…etc. You’ll also want to fix up your painting area with correct temperature lighting that’s as bright as a mid-noon clear day in the shades (5500K temperature full spectrum balanced lights) when you’re not painting during day time on a bright day. I’m assuming you’ll be painting by window light at first, since getting proper lighting setup is a bit too soon in the very beginning–you should only do that once you decide you want to get serious.

You might also want to try pastel painting (they call it painting although it’s a dry medium). Pastel is very lush and can produce works that rival the lushness of oils–but it is very messy to work with. If you work with pastels, you have to use proper pastel paper, or else it’ll be a frustrating experience.

#13

Thank you so much for taking the time Lunatique! :slight_smile: I found lots of answeres in your last post…
Now im off to the store! Ive changed my mind a bit about the oils and decided they must wait since i havent got much money, im going to buy some basic watercolor and acrylic stuff :)… Ill update on my progress later! You have all been very helpfull!

#14

Sorry to hijack your thread Frozzt, just a quick question for Robert… do you know if there is anywhere that sells that sort of equipment on line? I do practically all my painting indoors and have very little natural light, so have to rely on halogen lights, and have not been able to find anything in local artstores to give me a good level of simulated natural light.

And to Frozzt: I’ve tried practically every medium available in traditional. I love oils, but they do take a bit of getting used to and the issues on ventilation are important, turps can be a pain to get rid of too, as here it is illegal to tip it down the drain. But they are probably the closest you would get to digital, as they have the most latitude for adjustment once the paint is down. They are my favourite medium to use, but as they take so long with drying, I don’t use them as much as I should.

Acrylic’s colours can be trickier to get used too, as they tend to be much more vibrant, in my experience anyhow! But if you do a little planning before you start, there’s less chance of stuff going wrong. And I use a palette of usually no more than 7 or 8 colours, including white to pretty much paint everything (I usually use White, Cadmium Lemon, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Cadmium Red, Ultramarine and Cerulean Blue). But the fast dry time and their tendancy to not go down smoothly over large areas without lots of layering annoys me (due to the fact I paint in lots of thin layers to preserve some of their transparency).

I know you can buy range of oil-type paints that can be diluted and cleaned off brushes with water, too, but I’ve never used them so can’t comment on them in comparison to the traditional oils. If you do use traditional oils, I’d suggest investing in some artists brush cleaner, they tend to work wonders, and cleaning your brushes properly after every time you use them - and if you use larger brushes and find that the bristles are starting to stick out at the sides, wrapping a piece of wet loo-roll round them and leaving it to dry can help realign the bristles. Some people like to have loads of brushes - a different one for every colour they mix to preserve the cleanliness, but I tend to work with two or three and change my turps more often (or swap between two pots and leaving one to settle).

Watercolours can produce the most amazing paintings, and not just the light, airy things and washy landcapes you might initially bring to mind - check out the work of Paul Jackson to see what I mean, but this takes knowledge of the medium and a lot of patience and planning, as do most watercolour works. Of course it depends what kind of work you want to produce, but watercolour is much more versatile than most people believe and is easy to pick up and experiment with, but probably harder to truly master, as that takes knowledge of what colours mix best with what and which stain and which don’t etc etc. Watercolor seems to be the medium that has the most self-helps books too, as it is the hobbyists choice.

If you find pastels messy (can’t comment on them as I despise their messiness), you may want to try prismacolour pencils, as they are like a more solid waxier pastel, and can be blended with some practice, and work wonderfully on coloured card and such like. The self portrait in my sig was done in the UK equivalent of prismas, and pencils are still my favourite medium for doing relatively quick pieces. But, it can be costly to start your collection in the first place (my own collection is pretty much every colour they’ve ever done and is worth well over £100/$200) and you have to keep buying them, and pencil sharperners fairly regularly.

Phew! Hope I’ve not been too repetitive with anyone else there, but that is only in my personal experience, and there is no better way to find out than to try a little of everything and see what suits you.

#15

impossiiiblee :cry:

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#16

Thats it :thumbsup:

#17

I didn’t know that…

#18

I didn’t either.

Is that a recently introduced thing? because back when I was in art college tipping it down the drain was common practice both for staff and students.

#19

All major lighting companies sell them, and all major lightbulb manufacturers have their own line of full spectrum color accurate lightbulbs. I use Philips, but there are other brands. Here’s a google search:

http://www.google.com/search?hs=xSN&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=full+spectrum+light+bulbs&btnG=Search

And regarding water-soluble oil paints–I use Winsor Newton’s Artisan series, and it’s great. I can use the Artisan paints by themselves and only have to deal with water, or I can mix and match them with traditional oil paints and use traditional oil painting mediums–they are compatible with each other. I can also keep non-artisan paints/medium in a low percentage in the entire mixture with the Artisan paints, and they’ll remain water-soluble. Check out Winsor Newton’s website for details. Other brands have their own water-soluble line too, but I’ve only used the Artisan series.

The only small problem with the Artisan series is that in a few colors, the mixture is a bit sticky, but most other colors are fine.

I use a bunch of different brands of oil paints–from expensive stuff to average stuff–you don’t always notice the difference. Sometimes the expensive stuff will be noticeably more vivid as they contain more pigment and use purer binders, but this isn’t across the board for all colors. A good way to go about it is to buy average quality stuff, and for the colors you feel could be better, replace them with the expensive stuff.

#20

Thanks Robert, very useful. And as for the white spirit thing, I may have been misinformed, but I’ve not tipped it down the drains for a few years now, I just keep changing pots and soaking up the mucky stff in the bottom with rags. Doing a quick search on google, Thames Water says to contact your local authority for the best way to dispose of solvents, and reuze.co.uk says:

What to do with your white spirit

Household chemicals such as white spirit, paint stripper, weedkillers, fertilisers, pesticides and photographic materials are considered to be hazardous waste.

Telephone your local authority to find the location of a facility where you can safely dispose of hazardous waste.

DO NOT put white spirit down the drain or toilet.

#21

If you put your used White spirit or turps into a larger container, and let it stand. The solid suspension of pigment will settle out, leaving re-useable clear solvent above. No need to dispose, just use again.

#22

A local Firestation should be able to dispose of turpentine and mineral spirits safely. That’s where I had taken some of my old jars of turp when I didnt know what else to do with them.

#23

Anyone interested in oil painting should check out Alexei Antonovs works on

www.artpapa.com

I have two of his instuction videos, and they are just amazing.
It’s like watching one of the old masters over the shoulders.