Art Essentials

Hmm I used watercolor when I paint (which is rarely these days). I've seen things like canvas stretchers. Do you need that?

I do not need a canvas strecher quite yet. However, I might want to at some time in the future. I think making my on cavas would take more room and that is what is a premium to me. Right now I am interested in buying just the basics necessary and will buy the canvas. The main conflict I am having the many different types of easels and the various prices. I want to buy a good one but some of them are close to $1,000 and I cannot afford that. I also need help on choosing better brushes and types of paint. To be honest most of what I have comes from the local WalMart and may be the best I can do. But it is definite I need a new easel. The one I have now is way to wobbly and causes me problems.

Hi, Joanne. I respectfully disagree about the easel..for a while. Your are in an exploration period. I have a big easel that I have dragged with me everywhere I have moved since the early seventies. I look at the large easels in art stores now and they seem so very pristine...

Well, what do you need an easel for, exactly...you need it to get the slant you like to hold the canvas or whatever two dimensional matter you will work on...

I think you don't know enough yet. Big, small. Well, if you like painting small, you don't need a big easel. If you want to paint plein air, you need
a sturdy yet easily moveable one. Medium...well, you can paint medium or small on a big easel, but hard to paint big with a small one. If really big, it is easier to tack the canvas on a wall, or lay it on a table or floor.

Big uses different muscles...often if not always. Miniatures...you are pretty much working with your fingers and fine coordination. Very big, you use your whole body, certainly your hips, shoulders, elbows, wrist, fingers. dadada. Big gives you a lot of room for fluidity. Small means you zero in more...

I think you can improvise until you know what you like to do. I painted for years before I developed my recent painting persona...and went from class stuff to big, even in class, to big with a few small in oil or acrylic, changed subject matter, did small for quite a while and am now painting at what I think of as medium size, 3 x 4 feet.

Size tends to equate with money re expenses. Sometimes people price larger work higher. Big is not necessarily better, but you know this.

But - until you know what you feel like doing, I wouldn't just go get the best studio easel out there.

You can lean a canvas against stuff, perhaps raised on a block of wood like a two by four, perhaps with a 'stop' so it doesn't move. Wait with the purchase flurry.

There are paints and paints. I don't know acrylics very well, although I did use them for a while. There are new oil paints out...that are way less toxic than they used to be.

But...paint is very expensive...and you don't know what colors you need yet. Dare I say play with cheap paint first? Except possibly for the oils. You might find old fashioned turps and oil colors horribly obnoxious to work with because of the fumes...and there are water based oil colors and lowtox Gamblin oil colors and diluents.. so that you don't have to go through that.

Some small tubes of paint have a hefty price. I myself have two expensive tubes of cadmium red that I have no use for unless I start painting bordello scenes or the Cardinals in Rome, trying to copy Velasquez.

Brushes. I only have inexpensive brushes....mostly. Different brushes are important for different methods...again, you don't really know yet...your favorite brushes might be narrowed down to one or two, and then you should get six of those and not one of each kind you'll not use...

Opinions for today.

Thanks Osso that is a big help. I have been fooling around with painting for over a year. I prefer the 11" x 14" canvas which of course fit well on the easel I have but that easel is not good for small pictures as it is not adjustable. So from what you say I assume I can buy a cheaper adjustable easel.

I have no idea what my style is other than novice.

Joanne, not to come across as lord-ette of painting, but I have been playing around myself for about thirty years. Wild girl to landscape painter that people may think is nonadventurous. Wildgirl got to 5 x 6 feet routinely.

I don't know a thing about easels at 18" size. I would just tilt a canvas at an angle and be done with it. Really, watch the money. You don't have to be way-equipped. The finish and weave of the canvas gets to be important, for oils (don't know about acrylics) and paper is important for watercolorists.
Wait and wait some more before you throw money at stuff.

Relax y'self and have some fun. Save bucks, keep your eyes open.

Good advice Osso, thanks.