Getting into traditional painting
polycounter lvl 11
I was hoping you guys could make me some recommendations about getting into traditional painting.
I've never done any painting other than digital. But I've been to the art store today and saw some small $12 6x9 canvases, and thought maybe this is a good time to get into it.
To be honest I don't know shit about it. Don't know what kind of paint to use. They have watercolors, acrylics, gouache, oils, etc. What kind of brushes I need. If there's a need for other substances, like paint thinners and whatnot.
So I'm just looking for a minimum setup that's easy to work with for a beginner. I don't know if any of you remember the old Gnomon Bob Kato videos from like 10 years ago, but I'm thinking of something like that.
Also keep in mind that I don't have a lot of room. Just a small apartment. This is probably why I never got into it before. But after seeing those small canvases I thought maybe I can set up a small work area somewhere.
Any thoughts?
I've never done any painting other than digital. But I've been to the art store today and saw some small $12 6x9 canvases, and thought maybe this is a good time to get into it.
To be honest I don't know shit about it. Don't know what kind of paint to use. They have watercolors, acrylics, gouache, oils, etc. What kind of brushes I need. If there's a need for other substances, like paint thinners and whatnot.
So I'm just looking for a minimum setup that's easy to work with for a beginner. I don't know if any of you remember the old Gnomon Bob Kato videos from like 10 years ago, but I'm thinking of something like that.
Also keep in mind that I don't have a lot of room. Just a small apartment. This is probably why I never got into it before. But after seeing those small canvases I thought maybe I can set up a small work area somewhere.
Any thoughts?
Replies
[ame="
To start you just need a few colors and a couple of brushes. Synthetic brushes are fine with acrylics. I'd suggest some sort of glossy gel to mix in with the paint to give it a bit of gloss, and to give the paint a nice consistency. A cheap pallete knife to mix paint with, and you should be good to go. I usually use random plastic containers from things like take out food for palletes.
I really don't see where pastel crayons work like watercolors. They work more like colored pencils. Watercolors are a bit difficult to master, so I don't recomend starting with them. Acrylics and gouache are the easiest paint methods in my opinion. Gouache specially, you can use over paper, instead of canvas. Is cheaper to learn. And both are water based, non toxic.
Pastels are great too, and I love them. But it's not a tint based method, although is pretty artistic.
EDTI: Maybe this can help a little: http://www.wikihow.com/Paint-With-Gouache
This might be helpful:
http://youtube.com/#/watch?v=EenmvQuDRVo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEenmvQuDRVo
I started painting a little over a year ago, so I have limited experience but...
You can paint on hardboard aka Masonite sheets. Much cheaper if you buy it at Home Depot or similar:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/1-4-in-x-2-ft-x-4-ft-Hardboard-Tempered-7005017/202088798#.UYCPUMr-l8E
$7.25 for 4 feet by 8 feet vs $12 for 6 inches by 9 inches. Cut them up into whatever size you need. Get the thicker 1/4 inch stuff, not the 1/8.
Acrylics - dry fast, doesn't need solvents
Oils - dry slow, needs solvents (not so bad if you use stuff like Gamsol, check out the Gamblin website), best option if you want to do a lot of blending
Gouache - dry fast, use water to thin and clean, basically opaque watercolor
If you want to use oils, you will need proper ventilation of your room. Even "odorless" solvents aren't healthy to breathe in for long periods of time.
Brushes come in a million styles. Generally you want synthetic for acrylic and natural for oils. If you paint in a rougher style you can use hog hair brushes, a smoother blended style will require more expensive soft hair brushes.
Soft pastels allow you to blend over and over again. The semi-hard pastels don't allow as much blending on the surface. Be prepared for some gritty crap if you buy cheaper pastels, it varies depending on the pigment in each brand.
Pastel pencils are good for adding little detailed accents to your pastel paintings.
Invest in a good quality house painting brush for applying acrylic gesso, something like a Purdy. Cheap brushes will lose hairs and you will be picking them out of the gesso constantly. You can also buy a drop cloth to cover the floor under your work area.
Lots of colours to buy. This website has some good recommendations for a colour palette:
http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/palette5.html
This is a video I found helpful to explain paint mixing and palettes:
http://www.gamblincolors.com/navigating.color.space/index.html
Short version:
Buy a selection of cheap oil paints using the basic palette
Use Gamsol and Galkyd for thinning
Paint on hardboard sheets primed with acrylic gesso
Use square hog hair brushes of various sizes
Gouache is fairly easy too, but I found blending and making gradients harder because it dries quicker.
i would suggest not thinking about oil painting at all as a beginner.
keep it simple and do not spend to much money on exotic supplies you will not use.
here is my suggestion for a beginner kit that is still quite suitable for serious painting even after you are comfortable and have some experience.
start with acrylic.
get a large tube of white and black.
you need to learn how to blend in monocrome. that is the best way. you first need to learn how the materials work and develop your skill with blending and tonal painting. color mixing is a whole other level of complexity that you should not try in the beginning. if you want to experiment with color get a small tube of red blue and yellow. the first step is to learn how to mix color. you can do some color chromatic painting or bi-chromatic painting.
for small paintings use canvas paper(cheap). canvas board(cheap), or smooth wooden board.
get 3 or 4 hogs hair brushes of different sizes.
get an assortment of foam brushes (cheap).
get a small bucket of white acrylic gesso. this is what you use if you want to paint your canvas white again.
use a piece of masonite or glass as your mixing pallet. these clean easy with acrylic.
keep a stack of paper cups, paper towels and a jug of water handy.
a few warnings...
always soak your brushes in water. acrylic dries very fast and it will ruin your brushes if they set to long and the paint dries.
do NOT paint in a room with carpet. if you have to spread out a bed sheet over your painting area or news paper.
i agree that oil is great for the reasons you said. but for a beginner starting on there own at home oil painting is horribly expensive compared to acrylic. it is also more complicated and harder to get the techniques and mixing. all the different types of mediums, liquin drying additives, terpinoid etc. its really not the sort of thing you can pull together and do it properly unless you have some painting skill already and you take a class or do some extensive research.
keep in mind that traditional painting since the renaissance started with tempera painting, which is still very appropriate but less common then acrylic now. tempra is also a fast drying water soluble painting technique.
One of the trickiest things to get a handle on with paint is "how you get dem colors." You don't have to think about it on the computer, but seeing, feeling, and watching color "happen" with your hands is an amazing beast. I would suggest starting very simple like gray suggests before trying to get "the perfect nose skin tone."
Do swatch tests before you try painting something. Get a handle on how to get a full range of value, then move to a single color and give it a full value range, and that same color's chroma range. Its a good study that is simple and is a good way to jump into it
You could try some grayscale/monochrome paintings first and add more as you feel comfortable. One of my favorite things I did in school was in figure painting, and we were tasked to do 100 grayscale paintings in a week to get us to work quick, and be comfortable with black & white, thinning/drying, and using wet stuff to make pictures instead of dry stuff.
only final note would be to at least get a cheap easel, or a shitty wall to hang stuff on to work. You don't have to stand, but I'd suggest to work vertically and not lying the art down on a table. Its a personal preference, have known people to hate it... but i dunno, just feels better vertical
what moose is refering to when he says 'swatch' is small pieces of canvas that you use to test colors and blending on before you try to work that into a painting. that is how you avoid mistakes. remember there is no undo!
and if your working small (ie) under 6x9 8x11 then you should be ok on a table. just spread out some news paper on the floor. you will inevitably spill a cup of water of drop a brush on the floor.
I think you make it sound more complicated than it really is. Just get some paints and do it. There's tons of oil painting techniques. You don't have to follow the most difficult there is - that one of the renaissance masters. If you're really a penny pincher, you can even make your own canvases. Or get cheaper canvas board. Or paint on wood or pretty much anything else.
The most important thing is, have fun, explore techniques. Realize you're just learning. That your first work will not be one you want to keep and that practice makes perfect. Once you're comfortable you can get into the things that require "extensive research" but you can just as well have fun without all this. Really depends where you want to take this, just like with any form of art and technique.
My starting gear included a set of brushes, about 8 different oil paint tubes, a bottle of liquin, some turpentine, a palette knife and some canvas board. As beginner you really do not need anything more. After a few paintings I got an easel - makes things easier.
You can also get a palette if you feel artistic, but I found it annoying and just mixed colors on top of some aluminum foil.
Heck if Bob Ross can do it, so can you!
P.S. if you paint with oils, make sure there's no carpet and wear clothing you can throw away. Oil paint stains are pretty much impossible to remove. That's imho the biggest drawback.
hey hey hey now, leave Bob Ross out of this! lest his spirit haunt your nightmares with happy trees for a thousand reincarnations... he has that power, you have been warned!
[ame="
My first paintings were just still lifes. Fruit, cloth. Really just practice. Being able to blend colors easily and rework helped a lot with this exercise. I guess that was the whole point of it. Blending colors on the palette and on the canvas itself. Was a pretty big canvas (A3) that also made it easier to just paint in broad strokes first. We then moved to smaller ones to practice finer details.
What's especially nice with oils is that you can do so many fun things without a brush. Ross is a good inspiration on how to use a palette knife for actual painting, or the funny looking fan brush.
Forgot to mention: Pick up some plexiglass or glass at a hardware store to use as a palette. Its cheap, is sturdy to hold or lay flat, cleans easy. Plexi can scrape if you're aggressive with a knife tho. Don't drop the glass one
I'd start with acrylic. not because its better, or really easier, than the others, but because its more straight-forward. I love gouache and especially oil, but when you are just starting out, and trying to learn foundation, handling the paint can sometimes overshadow actually painting.
Just like what was said previously, don't bother with any colors other than white black, red, yellow, and blue.
don't worry about canvas, just buy an 11x14 sketchbook with heavier weight paper ( NOT watercolor paper, it fucking expensive ) you can easily burn through studies and tests with no anxiety, then you can step up to rough bristol, and when you become more comfortable, you can graduate to canvas, and committing a little more to a single piece.
I would use a glass palette though. You'll only ever need to buy one. If you buy a 8x10 or 11x14 piece of glass, and pop a sheet of white paper under it, you're set. It doesn't absorb any of your paint. It's super easy to clean. Acrylic will literally peel off of it after its dry and you can easily take any other paint off with a razor. You do have to be careful not to break the damn thing though