The title might be a bit misleading, I’m not actually about to tell you how to become a master artist and I don’t like to ever call my self an artist, but if you wanna start blobbing some paint on canvas for fun and don’t know what to buy, this is the simplest and possibly cheapest instructional guide!
There’s two things you need for painting, paint and something to paint on. You can use brushes, I usually start with brushes, but you’ve got fingers too dude. My favourite paint is this cheap set from The Works. I get most of my paint supplies from The Works. I’ve tried paint sets from other cheap shops and a few more expensive fancy ones, but for price and quality I like these a lot. They’re a bit thinner than higher quality acrylic paints are but have a much stronger pigment than a lot of paints I’ve used in this price range so they’re a really great option to be kind to your budget and still get some decent paint.
Canvases are the easy part for me, because I don’t really care much about them being particularly taut or whatever it is actual artists look for in a canvas. I like them to be a shape and size I’m feeling, and come in a multi pack. That’s it. I like this set of pretty small square canvases from B&M at the minute, though The Works also has great canvases and also canvas boards if you’re looking for something still budget friendly but easier to store.
Paint brushes are the one that’s optional for me, but might be necessary for you depending what kind of painting you do. I really like using flat brushes with soft bristles, I think they might be watercolour brushes come to think of it, and foam on sticks for blending. The great thing with brushes is that you can often get big cheap packets of lots of different kinds of brushes so you can figure out what you like. I got these two packs, one from The Works and one from B&M, both for £2 and though there are a lot more in the B&M packet many of them were very low quality and did not last more than one painting.
Optionally, I also picked up a palette, some rollers from Poundland and some wine, because if you can’t drink while you paint when can you?
-Dana
Carry on Beautiful! 