Painting Supplies For Beginners

Colours

You may find yourself overwhelmed at how many paint colours are available. The number seems to be growing every day! The good thing is that with just over half a dozen colours, you can create pretty much any colour. A good selection of colours for beginner painters is as follows:

– Cadmium yellow medium
– Cadmium red medium
– Burnt umber
– Burnt sienna
– Phthalo green
– Phthalo blue
– Purple
– Titanium white
– Mars black

Of course there are no limitations; this is just a sample of colours that you could use. By all means you can add colours such as purple, grey and brown into the mix. The colours given should provide a beginner with a perfectly good range of colours to use when painting.

Palette

A very useful type of palette you can use is the disposable palette. It’s great for beginners because it’s cheap and once you’ve used it once, you can throw it away. Alternatively, there are ‘stay wet’ palettes, which are especially designed to be long-lasting. These ‘stay wet’ palettes are also designed to be very light and easy to carry round.

Brush

Brushes come in all shapes and sizes. Most painters are able to use a single brush for their paintings. As a beginner, you might want to try out a few different shapes and sizes to see which one suits you best. Generally speaking, you should go for a thin brush if you’re doing a painting that has lots of detail to and a larger brush if you’re doing a larger painting with less fine detail.

Support

A support is the surface you apply your paint on to. Supports can be practically anything, from glass and wood to cardboard and, of course, canvas. Beginner painters should try canvas for their support. As with other painting supplies, there are loads of different types of canvas available. Buying a pre-prepared, pre-primed canvas will save you the hassle of preparing and priming the canvas yourself.

Other bits and bobs

As well as the supplies mentioned above, it’s handy to have a few other bits and bobs when painting. You’ll need things such as kitchen roll, a paper town or an old rag to help you clean up any mess afterwards. Have a pencil and rubber so you can do some light sketching to plan your painting out. You’ll also need a jar or glass of water to dip your brushes in and some soap to clean your brushes out once you’ve finished painting.