Oil paints

[DragonGX]

Can anyone help me find the right colors to buy to get a good starting palette? I want enough colors that i can paint a variety of things, but I dotn want to spend $100 on a ton of paint to start off with.. Any ideas of soem good choices for a basic but varied palette?

[viceboy]

get the primaries and a white and a black if you want. you can make anything (theoretically) from those.
CMY primaries usually (depending on company) = phthalo blue, permanent rose, and lemon yellow
if you want a larger palette try: ultra marine, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, cadium red/yellow/lemon, phthalo blue, and lead white and black if you use black. i dont actually have all those nice colors but its info i gathered from books.
student quality paints are only $5 a tube so the primaries+white+black is only $25. cheaper than some single tubes of artist quality color. gesso up some chip board its much cheaper than canvas. oh, and you'll need mineral spirits too which you can get cheap at a hardware store (just open the windows). and there you have the setup i use. all on a poor man's budget.:D oil painting is fun, good luck

[jester]

Or try the Winsor & Newton Artisan colors, which can be diluted with water (and also your brushes can be cleaned with simple warm water and soap). If need be, they also mix with traditional oil paints. More info you'll find here (http://www.winsornewton.com).

And don't forget to buy the best brushes you can afford. Bad brushes are a pain in the a$$ (made that mistake myself...)

Jester

[Lionel]

If you want brushes these are aparently very good and are a reasnoble price these are suposed to be good. I haven't tried them yet but I will get some when I start oil painting lots again.
http://www.trekell.com.

If you want really good oil paint the best is suposed to come from Ozog . If you want to start cheeply just get two colors and do some two toned sketches. It is a v good way of practacing and when you master that you can gradually add in more colors. A WORD OF WARNING THERE IS LEAD IN THIS PAINT. It is suposed to make the paints handle a lot beter but if you are a paraniod type you might want to give these paints a miss. I have some of Michael Hardings oil paints which are really good :) but not sure where you can buy thouse over the web.

http://www.studiomaterials.com/ (http://www.studiomaterials.com/)

P.S. Having nice oil paints just means that I produce more expensive mud but I have heard people say that good paint etc is a good investment for a beginner as it means you do less bateling against your medium and can dedicate more energy to learning.

[DragonGX]

they sell soem nice 18x24 canvases (primered) for like $4 a piece, i also saw a "sketchbook" but it was for oil paints.. not sure how that works exactly but i might giev it a try.. CAnvas paper or soemthing.. So im ont too worried about canvas.. i jsut dont know where to start with the paints..

[MindCandyMan]

If I was you Dragon I would go with a limited palette at first until you feel comfortable with the medium and then you could expand your palette...my suggestion is:

black, white, yellow ochre, raw umber, vermilion...your black serves as your blue...black really is a blue and I think it pays off to think of it this way from the beginning. Black shouldn't be used as a darkening agent the way that white is used. At any rate those are cheaply priced and you can paint still lifes...anything really with it. El Coro said it best...you paint with value foremost...not with color.

You can get big tubes of all those colors for really cheap at dick blick...check it out...these are student grade but seriously...if you are just starting out it's fine:

http://www.dickblick.com/zz004/30/products.asp?param=0&ig_id=253

Definitely post your paintings when you start doing it!

[DragonGX]

ahhh that would be very hard for me to paint without a blue... blue and orange are my 2 favorite colors and I tend to lean towards them in my art..

You say black is a blue, but how can you get lighter shades of blue (for example a sky) out of black?


BTW - thanks for that link, Ive been trying to find decently priced paints. I dont care if they are student grade since im learning and experimenting!

[DragonGX]

BTW - do any of you know abou paint tubes under pressure? I haev soem paints in utah id liek to breing back wiht me to paint with, but im afriad the pressurization will make them explode.. anyone know anyhitng about that?

[MindCandyMan]

you would get a sky blue out of black by just adding a little black to a blob of white. It will be a muted blue...you won't be able to get super super sky blue...but I like muted stuff anyways hehe.

not sure about the pressure thing...if they exploded that would be weird :confused:

[Elwell]

Originally posted by DragonGX
ahhh that would be very hard for me to paint without a blue... blue and orange are my 2 favorite colors and I tend to lean towards them in my art.

In that case, try experimenting with just burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, and white. You'd be amazed at the range of colors those will give you.

[jrr]

exploding paint, wow, that sounds untastic!
nothing in paint will make it explode. maybe your mediums would explode, my favorite medium, tnt, explodes, but i use it sparingly... for alittle kung-PoW on my paintings. hey look tristian elwell is here. more SVA peeps.

[Rohan]

I would recommend a warm and cool of each primary according to your own prefs along with a big tube of titanium white..since I find u always tend to run out of it first. I generally use an approach based on a colour bias wheel which has 6 basic colours, two leaning away from each of the primaries towards a secondary colour, there is a book that describes this method you might wanna have a quick look at before deciding on colour choices. It's Michael Wilcox's "Blue and Yellow dont make Green". and goes a long way to dispelling many myths about using traditional colours in oil, acrylic and water colour. The main reason for using this system as opposed to the traditional three is that pigments of this primary purity are simply not available. some people might disagree on this.

I'd recommend a black too but they seem to vary quite a bit in opacity and covering power and I find I don't use them much. I have lamp black and a paynes grey. Some people go for paynes grey as this was used by some masters as a black that doesnt muddy colours as much as darken them. Most dark tones can be produced with other colours, when you realise there is a lot of colour variation in even the darkest shadows.

Get some liquin or other similar quick drying alkyd medium to begin with too..it dries in approx 24 hours which can allow you to work in layers if you so desire without having to wait weeks for your oils to dry. When I started out in oils it took me weeks to months to complete a relatively simple painting due to the fact I had to wait for paint to dry, but u can make this work if u work on several pieces at once.

As for brands I find rowney georgian oils have a very consistent opacity which I like and are generally cheaper than winsor and newton which I have also used a fair bit. The winton student oils arent too bad, but when your paintings begin to age you will see the difference. havent been able to try many other professonal brands other than art spectrum(aussie brand) which I have limited experience with.

yeah and get yourself some quality brushes like jester said! U don't need too many and will probably benefit from using less in the beginning but a range of sizes is important. You'll want a pretty big brush for working large areas and blocking in as this will save u heaps of time. I try to pick brush sizes that fit into ranges at intervals like 20 10 5 2 or 30 15 7 (just examples) so I have a smooth progression from working on large areas down into detail. does anyone else do this?

something with quite a bit of tooth on the hair (holds paint better) and a bit of spring like mongoose hair, ox, or if u can afford it, sable. anything with hairs that feel like smooth plastic or cockroach wings! will be a pain. blahadeblah I could go on. take this all with a grain of salt as it's just my experience. I hope this helps and doesnt confuse you more. good luck

P.S I'd like to hear what other people think of various brands of paint and brushes. Has anyone tried griffin oils and alkyds?

[DragonGX]

What I meant by exploding is the pressure from the airplane makes them push out and explode all over anyhting that is nearby. not actually exploding like a flammable object.. Ive heard of peopel with shampoo bottles and other stuff like that exploding from the pressure..

Rohan - That books is very interesting. The idea that certain kidns of paint cancel pigments out is very cool.

Wilcox shows that color mixing should be based on a knowledge of the physics of color and pigments. Blue absorbs all but blue light. Yellow absorbs all but yellow. Mix them together and you should have black because the blue absorbs the yellow and the yellow absorbs the blue. Why do you get green? Because each pigment is also a carrier of green wavelength light and the mixing cancels out all other wavelengths. Color mixing is based upon cancelling out the unwanted to get the desired. Try mixing Utramarine Blue (a poor carried of green) with Cad. Yellow (a poor green carrier) --you get army drab mud. Now mix Cerulean (a rich green carrier)
with Lemon yellow (a rich green arrier).. you get bright vibrant greens (only one example). Wilcox shows how to mix all of the millions of colors with no mud and only 7 tubes of paint!!! Outstanding.

[MadSamoan]

Oil paint, in most cases, is ground pigment with linseed oil, or sometimes safflower oil, depending on the brand. Nothing explosive there. Nevertheless, I'm hearing firsthand that airports aren't allowing artists to travel with oilpaint in their carry-on luggage at the moment, so you'll have to check it in.

[DragonGX]

Originally posted by MadSamoan
Oil paint, in most cases, is ground pigment with linseed oil, or sometimes safflower oil, depending on the brand. Nothing explosive there. Nevertheless, I'm hearing firsthand that airports aren't allowing artists to travel with oilpaint in their carry-on luggage at the moment, so you'll have to check it in.


Yeah, you jmsut haev missed my above post. I meant that the pressure from the aircraft would cause the tubes to "explode". Not really a chemical explosion like yore talkign about, just a pressure explosion, like if you have a plastic bagand jump on it, the pressure makes it exploded evcen though there is no chemical explosion..

[emesen]

every thing here is wonderful info and I can only offer what I started with... You can get by with Alizirin Crimson, Phtalo Blue, and Cad Yellow Pale, and titanium white. I started with the cheapest Windsor Newton paints available. It's like cement but it will work wonderfully. Phtalo blue is like a virus and will quickly kill just about you might want to get prussian blue instead. If you can wait, aswexpress.com has really great deals and it will not empty you wallet. however they are not the quickest shippers... Usually takes about a week or so to get your stuff.

When you get comfortable mixing color you can mix equal parts of your red, yellow and blue (only a quater if you use phtalo) to get "neutral". This should look green, however if you test a little with some white it should turn a neutral grey... Unlike Black and Panyes grey you can use "neutral" to tone down and make a color darker with out changing it's hue.

[MadSamoan]

For a good limited palette, take a look at Anders Zorn's palette. Cadmium Red, Yellow Ochre, Titanium White and Black. When he'd paint outdoors, he'd add a green like Viridian. That's it. Take a look at his work and you'd be stunned.

[MindCandyMan]

anders zorn is the man!...his work is fantastic...I didn't know he used that limited of a palette...makes sense though now that I think about it...you can see it in his work. Limited palette all the way!!!! :rock:

[Elwell]

The Zorn palette is a great starting point, especially for figure and portrait work. Once you understand its possibilities and limitations it's easy to expand it with a few more colors (a blue or two, a brighter yellow, a cool red, maybe some earths).