Oil Supply List for Beginners

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 Loading ... I was asked via email the other day what materials a new oil painter should buy.  Good question!  OK let’s see now…

Paints - Obviously, you can spend a whole lot of money on paints.  Those tubes go pretty far, so buy smaller tubes of the best brand you can afford.  Check out Jim Harris’ post about the best oil paint.  Pay attention to the tiny writing on the tube - you want lightfast pigments.  To start you can get along with a few of the pigments listed below.  Then collect more as you go.  In my collection, I basically have a warm and cool version of each color on the color wheel, and an opaque and transparent version too.  One of the biggest mistakes people make is in their selection of whites - you have to have both flake (or transparent and warm) and titanium (opaque and cool) whites if you want your oil paintings to look like oil paintings.

1. Flake white**
2. Titanium white**
3. Arylide yellow**
4. Yellow ochre**
5. Scarlet lake (or some other red-yellow)**
6. Alizarin crimson hue (or some other red-blue)**
7. Ultramarine blue**
8. Ivory black**
9. Burnt or raw umber**
10. Raw sienna
11. Burnt sienna (Winsor Newton makes a transparent one)
12. Unbleached titanium
13. Sap green
14. English or Indian red
15. Manganese blue
16. Cadmium yellow (the orangey one)
17. Chromium green
18. Prussian blue

** essential pigments, in my opinion.

Brushes - I don’t think expensive brushes are important.  I use crappy brushes so i can run away and cook dinner and ruin them without feeling bad.  But that’s just me.  So just for starters, I’d say buy one of those sets of super-cheap “flat” shape bristle brushes in multiple sizes 1-10, and a set of synthetic flats or filberts, sizes 2 4 6.  I use bristles for washing in and laying out, and the synthetics for details. 

Canvas - Dick Blick has a canvas sale a couple times a year where you can get a really good deal.  Lots of people like to use the canvas that’s stapled in the back so they don’t have to frame it…  I really like to use masonite panels primed with acrylic gesso and sealed with a couple coats of GAC 100.  When you’re ready to upgrade, New Traditions linen panels are so, so, so nice.  And you get to say “oil on linen” which sounds pretty good.

Easels - gee I think I had one of those $10 tripod thingies from the art store for like 10 years.  Now I have a Richeson harp-style that’s pretty good (about $200), an Italian sketching easel that wobbles too much (about $50), a french easel that was super handy on a trip (about $150), and a Dick Blick harp style that sucks pretty bad.  I want to get a really super nice easel one day.  Hint: xmas is just around the corner.  I’m just saying.

Mediums and additives - to start, you really don’t need anything.  Most paint thicknesses can be achieved by applying different pressures.  If you want to stay away from solvents, you can buy M Graham’s Walnut Alkyd Medium which is just oil and alkyd resin and doesn’t stink.  If you want to wash-in your underpainting, you’ll need a solvent.  Gamsol is (so they claim) the slowest-evaporating OMS, so less of it is in the air.  You can use it for both washing in and for brush cleaning. 

Paint knives - Plastic palette knives are ridiculous.  Spend the $5 and get a metal palette knife in the diamond shape and you’ll go pretty far. 

Palette - Personal preference - you can buy one of these, or use the paper palettes, or use a piece of glass or clear acrylic which cleans up super easy.  I use Reynold’s Freezer Paper and tape it down at the corners on top of a rolling Ikea nightstand.  Very sophisticated.

Lighting - You know, I really can’t work without an easel light, so I guess I should mention it.  The OttLight isn’t ideal - I think the light runs a little greenish - but it’s way better than incandescent light. 

OK.  Let me know if I forgot something!!!