With so many different types of paint how is a beginner artist supposed to go started in painting?  In today'southward postal service for those looking to learn how to pigment I'll be laying out some of the differences and rubber concerns regarding the most pop types of paint.

What Type of Pigment Should I Employ?

I've created and so many forms of fine art using such a diverseness of techniques and mediums it's a wonder I didn't write this post sooner!  If you are looking to get started learning to paint, the following volition help you decide which paints to buy.

Notation: The advice in this post is aimed at new artists looking to paint in most normal, conventional ways with paper, canvass, and brushes.

I tin can use more exotic means of creating artwork, such as spraying paints, and mixing paints into hot-wax but, I experience that would only misfile readers who have come up here and desire to figure out: What is The Best Paint To Learn With?

What Pigment Should I Use?

It actually does depend on what yous are looking to pursue in your artwork.  Super tight details?  Quick outdoor impressions?  Abstract compositions with spontaneous surprises?

I'll exist rating each type of paint based on 7 attributes:

  • Safety – A higher score indicates that this paint is typically safer to piece of work with.
  • Expense – How much money required to continually make paintings. A college score indicates a more expensive medium to work in.
  • Portability – How piece of cake it is to take your painting act out of the studio and paint and clean up in remote locations.
  • Immovability – How tough is the painting? Does spilling soda on information technology mean the painting is completely ruined?
  • Controllability – A high score indicates that the paint inherently allows y'all to make perfect pigment blends and ultra fine lines and edges when necessary.
  • Forgiveness – Does this paint type permit you to set mistakes many times over? How easy is information technology to repaint and rework this type of pigment?
  • Spontaneity – A loftier score means this type of pigment and all its available additives permit for easy exploration of techniques and paint effects.

Oil Paint

Oil Paint Attributes [chart]

Oil paint is by far the easiest pigment to create smooth gradients. Information technology is such a slow-drying, viscous paint that blending from colour to colour is a pure joy. If yous want to perfect your colors and values over the class of many sessions and have acceptable ventilation in your studio infinite, oil paints are a good choice for you. Traditional oil painting tin be somewhat hazardous to your health and somewhat of a fire hazard due to the solvents/mediums needed for thinning and cleaning up; 1 must showroom circumspection and common sense when working with oil paints. If you demand more specific advice on getting started with oil paints, please inquire questions at the bottom of this folio and I'll be happy to assistance.

Acrylic Paint

Acrylic Paint Attributes [chart]

Acrylics started achieving commercial success in the 1950s and have grown in popularity ever since. Acrylic offers the widest selection of paints and mediums (paint additives) compared to any other type of paint. Because they thin and cleanup with water they are very easy to try at home. Acrylics dry extremely fast and as a issue painting outdoors with acrylics tin exist really difficult. Creating large circuitous blends are likewise hard to master due to acrylic's rapid drying time. Acrylic paints really excel when y'all want to paint solid areas of color, rapidly layer paint over previously dry out layers, or experiment with the many unique pigment additives available in acrylic form.

Watercolor

Watercolor Paint Attributes [chart]

Often not taken quite as seriously equally oils or acrylics, watercolor paint predates all previously mentioned types of pigment. Watercolor makes correcting mistakes in your painting difficult and sometimes incommunicable. Watercolor is 1 of the least expensive, about portable forms of painting, requiring the to the lowest degree corporeality of supplies and equipment. A painter using watercolor has to be open to its surprises and spontaneous furnishings some of which can be stunningly cute with minimal effort. If you lot're looking to change and rework paintings until they showroom ultra-tight details and precision look elsewhere, watercolor is probably non for you.

Water Mixable Oil Paint

Water Mixable Oil Paint Attributes [chart]

As one of the new comers to the painting scene water soluble oil paints accept tried to retain the oily feel and irksome drying time of traditional oil paints with the safe and simplicity of using water as a thinner/cleaner. If you are concerned with the hazardous nature of traditional oils simply all the same desire to blend your paint for hours at a time, h2o mixable oils may be the paint for you. I have noticed many plein air painters whom paint outdoors take made the switch from pure oil paints to water mixable oil paints.

The Blazon of Pigment I Use

Oil paints have long been my favorite medium of choice for my typical work, but I typically pigment in the realism tradition, working with many layers of color, perfecting blends and edges over the course of many hours. A picayune chip of oil paint covers such a large area and lasts such a long time in the tube they are deceivingly inexpensive. I have tubes of oils that are over 15 years sometime and they are still good. Over the years I found ways to make oil painting safer. This includes decreasing the amount of painting solvents I use while painting. E'er make clean your easily thoroughly after working with oil paints. Some artists even use nitrile gloves while painting in oils.

What paint you lot use and commencement learning with actually depends on the type of artwork you envision yourself creating, your budget, and any health concerns yous might have.

What is your favorite blazon of paint and why?

Tell u.s. below!