One of the things I love having around my studio is high quality paint, this may not sound very exciting to some, but to me it's nirvana.
In terms of my art studio, paint is my obsession, whenever my husband or friends ask what I'd like for christmas I usually ask for a few tubes of paint, you can keep your designer handbags and shoes, I want paint.
So that's my guilty little vice, I probably have far too many tubes of paint.
But if you are an aspiring artist just starting out on your art journey I'd recommend buying only a few paint colours at first, good quality paint is quite expensive and actually you only need a limited palette in order to create some amazing paintings, just the basic primary colours and possibly a couple of the secondary colours is all that you need, and with this basic set you can mix and create all manner of extra colours, and certainly all of the tertiary colours.
As your confidence grows you'll also start to develop some unique and beautiful colour combinations of your own, therefore initially I'd recommend just focusing on the wonderful process of painting and colour mixing, I strongly advise mixing your own paint shades and colour combos, not only is it fun it will also bring a unique edge to some of your paintings, colours that cannot be copied because only you will have the recipe ;)
It's one thing to share your art with others and its flattering when other artists copy your work or feel inspired by your paintings, nothing wrong with that and many artists do it, but it's also nice to keep some things for yourself and certain colour combinations are one of the things I like to keep for myself, particular colours that are personal to me and my paintings, these colour mixes are part of the joy of painting for me, a bit like a cake maker creating a new special recipe!.
My top tip ...
Try to avoid mixing more than a few colours at once, otherwise you may end up with a muddy shade, and also remember that if you mix shades of red and green together this will often create varying shades of brown ( aka mud).
Keep your paint collection small at first, and experiment with mixing.
You could always add to your collection of paints further down the line if you fancy a change, or if like me you suddenly find yourself developing a strange attraction to paint tubes!.
Happy creating everyone.... follow your dreams
L J
x
Â
Comments