Acrylic Materials:
Even though the rule of thumb with art supplies is you get what you pay for, it pays to know what to look for, where to get it and where to find deals. We will be discussing the practical side of running a studio.
Synthetic brushes are good and cost effective. I like “bright” brushes: square-shaped, hair not too long, easy to control and very versatile.
The brushes that have the biggest bang for buck are called Ebony Splendor by Creative Mark.I have found that they keep their shape well, take enormous abuse and are a nice balance between flex and stiffness. ASW http://www.aswexpress.com has frequent brush sales and you can at times get a set of 7 brights for as low as $10, which is a fantastic starter set and great value.
We will start with a minimum array of large, medium, small bright (or flat brushes if bright is not available) and a medium round. I will show examples of each in class.
Paint:
Acrylic comes in a huge range, some are expensive (often worth it) and the range goes all the way down to little jars of craft paint for less than $1.00 per jar (won’t cut it).
My top recommendation is Golden Paint, It is very high quality, great color range, highly pigmented and the paint has a nice consistency.
Liquitex and Winsor Newton are readily available and medium quality, Nova Color is thin in consistency, the colors are fairly rich but it is too thin for any texture based techniques. I adviseagainst student grade paint, which is basically good paint that has been severely diluted. It is best to control the level of dilution to achieve the desired results.
Required Paint:
- Large tube of Titanium white
- Large tube of Burnt Sienna
- Large tube of Ultramarine Blue
- Small tube of Mars Black
- 2 sets of primary colors (will be used to make all colors):
set 1: Cadmium Red Light, Hansa Yellow, Cerulean Blue
set 2: Quinacridone Violet, Cadmium Yellow Light, Ultramarine Blue (just the large tube)
Mediums:
Required: Matte medium
Matte/gloss medium: matte/gloss additive for extending paint and also used to change the surface sheen.
Retarder: extends wet time, allowing more time to work before drying.
Flow release: used for painting techniques such as staining, allows acrylic pigments to flow more smoothly over a wet surface.
Surfaces:
Required Canvas: students will learn to build their own stretcher and stretch a canvas, each student is required to build the canvas for at least one painting assignment. The other canvases may be purchased pre-stretched. We will overlap projects, so please buy 2 canvases to begin. For the first two paintings a minimum size will be 20” x 16”.
Palate:
Required: Wax paper palate pad, at least 9” x 12”
DO NOT BUY A PLASTIC PALATE WITH LITTLE INDENTATIONS, THEY ARE MUCH MORE DIFFICULT TO MIX PAINT ON.
Miscellaneous materials:
Shop towels: very useful for cleanup, more durable than paper towels, less waste and fewer fibers that come off into the work if you use them to smear or remove paint.
Palate knife, pencil, masking tape, spray bottle, plastic wrap (to protect paint from drying on the palate)
