Jane's Art Basics: Acrylic Paint Quality

Use the Paints That Work for You

If you are a beginner, you may well get conflicting advice on what kind of paint to buy. Many feel that starting with the highest quality paints you can afford is necessary to have success as a beginner. If you are beginning with a teacher who requires specific, high quality, paints, then that makes sense. 

If you are starting without a teacher, your choice of paint will depend on what your goals are. Do you want to explore image-making as a way to express yourself, or just to relax and do something that takes you out of your everyday life activities? Or do you want to learn, step-by-step, how to make a certain type of painting? Is it a casual interest or a commitment to mastering something specific?

If you want to do art to relax, explore, discover what is in you as an image-maker.... my recommendation is to begin with fairly affordable paints so that you can freely experiment without worrying about 'wasting' expensive material. If high quality paint is going to intimidate you, leave it out. For now.

Once you are  comfortable with a few techniques, and you are committed to your practice, I HIGHLY recommend introducing professional quality paints, such as Golden Fluid Acrylics or Heavy Body Acrylics from Golden, Holbein, Sennelier, or other manufacturers. Start with just a couple of colors that you use a lot, or primary colors - blue, red, and yellow - that you can mix into other colors. Then add more as you grow into your commitment to painting. You will likely extend them with acrylic mediums, as they are very pigment-rich. A little goes a long way.

High Quality Professional Grade Paints

Golden Fluid Acrylics are super easy to use, and come in a huge range of colors. They are professional quality paints, with heavy pigment load, so you can extend/dilute them with any acrylic medium and still get vibrant colors. Other manufactures of high quality paint include Holbein, Sennelier, Kroma, Tri-Art, and many others.

Student Grade Paints

Liquitex Basics are one of several brands of student grade, affordable, paints, that may be a good choice for a beginner. They come in sets, and are very affordable.

Blick Studio Acrylics are similar to Liquitex Basics. They are affordable, and come in a wide variety of colors.

Arteza offers a few lines of acrylic paints. The "premium" are a decent student-grade paint. There is not a lot of information on the packaging, so it's not clear how light-fast or permanent the colors are. Still, if you are just beginning, these aspects of paint may not be your highest priority. 

 

Ultimately, if you are committed to a painting practice, you will want to explore the range of qualities of paints. You will find the variety of paints that work for you. I hope this gives you some guidelines.

Supply List For Beginners

I have been asked a few times what supplies I would suggest for a person just beginning their art practice. So I put together this list of recommendations for those interested in working with acrylic paint, collage, and drawing materials. Download the list here.

My general advice on art supplies: start with basics - paint, brushes, paper, drawing tools - and if you want to do collage, paint your own collage papers. Leave out the fancy stuff: metallic or pearlescent, fluorescent, glitter, or dimensional paints, special-purpose paints such as pouring paints, alcohol inks, and the like. Not that you won't try these products at some time in your journey, just don't rely on the bling factor to make your art for you.

 

Even though I use professional quality paints, I suggest the beginner use decent-quality but less expensive paints such as Liquitex Basics, Blick Studio Acrylics, or Nova Color Paints. You don't want to feel too precious about your materials. Ease into your acquisition of professional quality (expensive) paints.

 

 I have created a list on the Blick Art Materials website. You can order from the list, or just take a look at each product and find comparable products at your favorite art supply retailer. 

 

This is my Beginner's Supply List. Download it here.

 

White Paint

I tested six different brands of white paint to see how they compared in opacity.

My favorite brand is Blick Matte Acrylic, but it is not available in Canada. I did find that the Holbein, Sennelier, and Pebeo were pretty comparable. I will test the Liquitex a little further to see how it performs in my regular painting practice.

More Fun And Easy Collage Paper Techniques

Sometimes you just need something fun and easy to do in the studio that cheers you up and feels productive.  Making Pretty Papers is just the thing for a chilly November day.
WARM Collage papers for an uncertain future from Jane Davies on Vimeo.

Here are some links to the materials I am using, though there are more links on my Favorite Materials page.

Novacolor Paints - these are decent quality paints: good pigments in a good binder, but they are more extended (i.e. less pigment per unit of volume) than professional grade paints.  You can only get them from the manufacturer; they are not available from retailers.

ArtQuest Perfect Pigments, made in Michigan, are relatively new to me.  Gorgeous colors!

Golden Fluid Acrylics: many of you are familiar with these luscious paints.  I use them for most of my smaller work, and the Heavy Body paints for larger works.  I use some of the HB paints in this video too.

Golden High Flow Acrylics: these are low-viscosity (think: watery) paints suitable for dripping, dropping, splashing, flinging, hurling, spattering, and the like.  They have the same pigment load as other Golden paints, so they are not simply Fluid Acrylics watered down. 

Stay Warm, but have a chill weekend.  We all need it after last week!

Playing with Color

I was playing with some colors that are new to me, and discovered some really great hues.  Almost every time I order paint I order a color I am unfamiliar with.  Sometimes it sits unopened in the studio for months, and sometimes I can't wait to try it.  Eventually, I get around to exploring the new colors, and always discover something surprising.

This is the first study I did in the video, using Sennelier's Sepia, Blick Matte Acrylic White, and Golden's Indian Yellow Hue fluid acrylic.

In this one I am primarily investigating Golden's Terre Verte Hue, mixing it with their Nickel Azo Yellow and some white.

This is an earlier version of the Sepia test.  I mixed it with a teeny bit of Quinacridone Gold (from Golden) in those few bits on the right.  Otherwise it's just Sepia with varying amounts of white and gray.

Here are a couple of quick tests I did with some unusual colors (for me) from Golden:  Permanent Maroon, which is relatively transparent, kind of an muted red-purple; and Violet Oxide, which looks to me like an opaque version of the same thing.  I mixed them with white, and then with one other color, as indicated. 

Stacks of Shapes

In my Big Fat Art workshops one of the "tools" we use is shape.  So I demonstrate a bunch of simple ways to make shapes.  Here are a few.

This is sort of a continuation of my 9"x12" Cheap Drawing Paper pieces that I've blogged about here, here, and here.  These are ways to get started, get the ball rolling.  In general, working with a simple set of parameters that does not include making a masterpiece or even a finished piece of art, is a great way to keep your Inner Critic in her place. 

I left most of these pieces as is, but took most of them a step further.  They are just little shape studies, and are meant to generate ideas and engage the visual/intuitive piece of my brain.  See my finished pieces (well, some are in process) based on shapes here.

I had fun adding a little pattern to this one.

This is the collage example in the video.

I gave it some fog.

This one isn't in the video

The scribble/stenciled shapes here look like sheep to me.

Playing with fog and some solid flat space

Last demo piece in the video with stuff added

And then some more stuff.

 I have a Pinterest board of shapes showcasing pieces from many different artists in which shape is a primary element.  Thanks for visiting!

Backgrounds on Paper and Cloth

I decided to take a Mixed Media with Paper and Cloth online class with Jane LaFazio, one of our Sketchbook Challenge bloggers. She is a fabulous fiber artist, and artist extrordinaire, and offers online classes through Joggles, one of my favorite mixed media supply retailers. For our first lesson, we are making backgrounds on paper and cloth (these ones are on muslin), using gesso, maybe texturing it, and then acrylic paint. Here are just a few of mine:

I applied gesso, then created texture using a knitting needle, scribbling lines in it. Once that was very dry, I Played With Paint!! Transparent turquoises and blues, and opaque Baltic Green; then I stamped the little white dots.

This one is done the same way, using a different color palette. I LOVE this muslin thing!This one is similar, though I let the first Paint Playground dry before adding some of the transparent colors: quinacridone gold and nickel-azo yellow.
I have no idea where these will go. Jane demonstrated a stencil technique as well in the first lesson, but I may wait to use that later in the process. Thanks for visiting!

COLLAGE JOURNEYS VERMONT

Happy February! Did everyone check out the new theme on the Sketchbook Challenge? Opposites, presented by Laura Cater-Woods. I can't wait to start!

February might be a good time to start thinking about summer - for me it is, anyway - so if you are looking for an art retreat in a low-key, supportive, and focused atmosphere, consider my Collage Journeys in Vermont.

August 15 – 19, 2011

Join me, Jane Davies, for a five-day adventure in collage and mixed media at my studio in beautiful rural Rupert, Vermont.

This workshop, based on my books “Collage Journeys” and “Adventures in Mixed Media” will take you on a journey exploring diverse avenues for tapping into your creative wellspring of ideas and images. You will draw and paint with abandon, tearing up the results to make beautiful collage compositions, learn techniques for sketchbook journal, discover the evocative possibilities of text and images relationships, develop personal visual and iconographic vocabularies, and much more. You will come away from this workshop with

· Greater confidence in your expressive capabilities

· New skills and techniques for creating meaningful art

· A sense of your own creative potential through collage and mixed media

· A set of practices for keeping your creative skills honed

· Several finished projects

We will take some time for projects of individual interest, and the studio is open 24 hours for your use. Some materials will be provided, though I will provide a supply list as well.

Housing and Meals

I will send each student a list of accommodations in the area*. There are many charming B&B’s and inns within fifteen minutes of my studio, at a variety of price ranges. Lunch will be provided each day of the workshop and is included in the fee.

Cost: $475, includes tuition, lunch, and some materials.

Contact me for more information or to register.

*I can rent a guest house just kitty corner from my studio which has 4 beautiful bedrooms plus 2 full baths, one half bath. If four of you want to commit to this, I'll take a deposit and rent it. Likewise, there is a rental next door which accommodates three. Either of these options would likely be cheaper, closer, and much nicer than anything else in the area. Please let me know EARLY if you are interested.

This is the guest house rental: wrap around porch, screened in shady patio....

A few comments from Collage Journeys 2010:

I am so inspired to create now that I have returned from my art retreat, Collage Journeys, in Rupert, Vermont. Being with Jane her in person far exceeds anything that could ever be learned in a book (But buy “Collage Journeys” anyway….it’s fantastic!) Not only was her studio so welcoming and easy to work in, but Jane is a host beyond compare! The workshop was….in a word, PERFECT! - Marianne Mullen

Jane’s teaching moved me ahead in the work I am trying to do. Now I feel free to use paint and rip things up and cover things. I always wondered how people got those interesting layered backgrounds for collages, and now I know some ways. It was great to try things I had only read about in her excellent book, “Collage Journeys”. Sometimes I feel my work is out in left field, compared to what others are doing, because I just go my own way and follow my own leading, but I felt that Jane understood what I am attempting to do, and that meant a lot to me. - Deborah Simmerman

I have been painting and pasting and tearing and cutting this afternoon and can't help but think of you. Back home, working alone, I am beginning to see how much I learned during the workshop. It was more than I'd expected and I want to thank you again for sharing your home and studio, your experience and knowledge and most of all, you. - Connie Rosenthal

Water-Soluble Oil Pastels Revisited

OK, so I tried the Portfolio water-soluble oil pastels again, inspired by iHanna, who kindly commented and gave me a link to her demonstration. Check it out. She uses the oil pastels on un-primed paper, then coats it with acrylic medium when dry. I did a variation on that by brushing on a tiny bit of gesso, just here and there, on the page before playing with the oil pastels. Then, after brushing on some water, I scraped the color around with a credit card, my favorite art supply. Here is a detail of the above.
And here is another page in this ongoing sketchbook:
On another topic: I'm gearing up for my Color and Composition class, "Creative Beginnings", which is on Friday. I got my supplies together this afternoon and wrote the hand-out. Here are a few paints I'm bringing:
These Blick matte acrylic craft paints are not as bright as I'd like, so I'll be sharing my Goldens for color mixing. I use a lot of craft paints along with my Goldens in Scribble Collage. Thanks for visiting!

Tools, Not Rules

Next Friday, the 28th, I am teaching my Art Basics workshop for the first time. It will be at Studio Place Arts in Barre, VT, and I am way excited about it. We're calling it "Creative Beginnings: Unlocking the Secrets of Color", just to have a fun title, but it is really about the basic building blocks of painting/collage: color, composition, and I'll cover materials as well - paper, paint, mediums. The class is almost full, but we may be able to squeeze in a couple more students, so if you are interested and can get there next Friday, call Studio Place Arts.


Yes, we will begin by making color wheels, and then various sorts of color gradations, just to see what to paints do, and to anchor the rest of the discussion and establish a vocabulary for the composition studies. My theme here is "Tools, Not Rules"; the color wheel and gradations, and the elements of composition are tools, just as your brushes, your eyes, and your palette are tools. They do not constitute a set of rules that must be followed in order to make good art.

Here are a couple of composition samples:
We'll be working "off the grid", doing lots of sketches and playing with variations.

OK, on to the next topic: the Sketchbook Challenge! I have found that I am reluctant to draw in my sketchbook because I don't want to "waste" the fine printmaking paper I used to make the book. Plus, I am just starting to draw, so my drawings are pretty basic. "Not worthy" of the fine paper or putting in a hand-bound book. See? So why not paint in my sketchbook? BECAUSE I DON'T LIKE TO PAINT IN A BOOK! Who knew? I prefer to paint on a sheet of paper. But today I seem to have broken through this little self-made obstacle. I just started doing color study/painting/collages in the book, and guess what: I feel freer doing these as "studies" in the sketchbook than I do when working on paper. Here are a couple of pages, and I'll do a post on the Sketchbook blog in the next couple of days.
Thanks for visiting!

New Collage Paintings

Here are a couple of new pieces, both using a leaf rubber stamp that I carved. For an inspiring and comprehensive look at making your own stamps, check out Judi Hurwitt's stamp tutorial. The first collage-painting, "Clothesline", is one I started a few weeks ago and posted some of its early stages.
You can see how much a painting can change over the course of its journey. I often find myself obliterating parts that I really like or have spend a lot of time on. But for me, this letting go, this ability to "destroy" precious parts in favor of the painting as a whole, is one of the essentials of making art. Suspending judgment, letting the painting speak, responding to what is there on the paper, not what "should be" there in my head, is like a meditation. A practice of detachment. It is a constant effort.

This next one, "Blue Circles", is inspired by the paintings of Victoria Huckins, whom I discovered recently. I'm trying to absorb some of her color sensibility to branch out from my usual colors.
I'm trying more reds and blues, and I love this light green-yellow thing. Both of these paintings are done on watercolor paper to which I have laminated muslin. I love painting on cloth, and I just started using muslin-on-paper as a substrate. "Blue Circles" also has a piece of lace trim adhered to the substrate with heavy acrylic gel.

Clothesline, More Stages

OK, here are three more "stages" of the piece that I posted on December 22nd. Not sure where this is going. I've totally forgotten about the composition sketches I did before the painting. I think I'll let it sit for a while and see if it is finished or what else it needs.

I hope you all had a lovely holiday! I sure did. We have loads of snow here in Vermont. A true snow day. And fortunately, we haven't lost power yet.

The Sketchbook Challenge starts on Saturday, January 1. I can't wait to see what the first theme is! I hope you all will sketch along with us and post your pages on Flickr.

My first workshops of the year are at Ink About It in Westford, MA on Friday, January 7, and Saturday, January 8. Friday's workshop is the Panel Book, a particular type of accordion structure. In Saturday's workshop we'll be making a Dream House out of foam core. I'll post pix soon. Thanks for visiting!

In Stages

I've been asked by several of you if I could show a few of my pieces in stages of development, and that last post was something like that. The Sketchbook Challenge has got me thinking about process, and spending more time in the development of an idea. I don't ordinarily post pix of pieces in stages because I never know where a piece is going or if it is even going to make it. I don't want to interrupt the process to go scan something (I generally scan my pieces in at least two parts and then put them together in Photoshop). But since sketchbooks and therefore idea development are going public for the Sketchbook Challenge, here is a shot at showing a piece in progress. First, my fountain pen sketches in my tiny (4.5"x6") sketchbook. Then "Stage One" of a composition. And just for good measure, a photo of some of my sketchbooks.

In case you are wondering, here is how I did the "Stage One": 11"x11" watercolor paper; couple coats of gesso; lay down color (Naples Yellow); make big shapes (Jenkins Green and Quin. Gold) and press or draw texture into them; a layer of clear medium - can't remember what; scrape some Pthalo Turquoise over the green, let some green show through. Stop, think, scan, Photoshop, post a blog about it.... If this goes anywhere, I'll post the next stage.

Out On A Limb part 2

Thanks for your comments on the last two pieces. I decided that this bird one, Out On A Limb, was not quite done, so here it is in its later incarnation. I'm never sure if anything is done until it sits around a while to "cure".

Just Some More Work

OK, I'm going out on a limb here a bit and showing two pieces I'm not sure are finished yet. I guess if I'm going to be posting sketchbook pages, I may just as well post unfinished or not-sure work. Thanks for all your comments and insights about sketchbooks!! I made myself a book for 2011, and am dying to start drawing in it, but I am just going to have to WAIT! And use my other books in the meantime. No shortage of them!

I haven't posted any of my 2011 workshops yet (and I WILL!!!), but so far I'm teaching at Ink About It on Jan. 7 and 8; Studio Place Arts on Jan. 28; AVA Gallery and Art Center on April 29 and June 24; Art Unravelled (site will be updated soon) on August 7 and 8; my own studio August 15 - 19; and at InView (near me in VT) sometime in early November. I'll be filling in other dates as they come up. I've applied to teach at CREATE in CA in May and Chicago area in August. We'll see.

Holy CROW!!!

This Sketchbook Challenge thing is really taking off!!! And I feel like such a newbie, since my sketchbook habits are a bit underutilized. I have been using sketchbooks more often recently in order to generate subject matter, ideas in terms of Things, not just color, pattern, texture, etc. etc. We'll see where this goes! Come along with me, and please send me your comments, advice, suggestions, and constructive criticism. One thing I would like to know from you, if you do sketchbooks/visual journals, is: if you know you are going to show your pages to people (post them on your blog or web site), how does that affect your creative process?

Meanwhile, back at the studio I'm still working on collage paintings. Here are a couple of birds. More on the way. Thanks for visiting!