Advice On Painting?

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I seek to learn painting, but I also need to have something I can do at home while bored. I'm not sure what kinds of paints exist, which are messer than others, etc. Can you offer insight into a simple thing, hobby, that won't take alot of money but is fun?

I don't know if this is what you meant, but I like simple colour pencils. There was a time when I used to use them to recreate photographs, and I found it very enjoyable to see how close to the original I could come with traditional means. I just use a 24-set with colour pencils and your average printer paper, so it's not that expensive.

Just an idea.

Experiment a bit ! ! Go to an Art Supply store and try some different ones. As a rule, oil paints are messy and smeary, which give oil paintings their unique look. Acrylic paints dry fast, but require a speeded up painting style. As ccgensou said, colored pencils are fun and easy to use. Or you could get a computer program (many available) and a pressure sensitive drawing pad.

Acrylic tend to be the cheapest, are water soluable, and also aren't so hard on the pipes in your home (although even still I recommend dumping thicker contents in the trash if possible).

There are water soluable oil paints now, but as with most oil paints, I believe these are more expensive.

Acrylic is also good for the person who isn't experienced and may have poor painting patience because they dry fast, as opposed to oils which can sometimes take days for a single coat to develop a skin. With oils, if you don't wait, you'll likely get a muddy mess.

For regular oils, you'd need some kind of turpentine or other solvent to clean your brushes and palate. If you do use oils, be sure NEVER to dump them down the sink... unless you've been planning to have an excuse to replace the pipes.

As for colored pencils, I personally recommend using Prismacolor. They're expensive as hell but well worth the money. So smooth and blendable.

i've done a lot of coloured penciles as well,
one technique i particularly like is : aquarel paint (these little cubes) ,
as a basis and finish it with coloured pencils over it (especially bright colours like white and yellow)

if you don't have any good aquarel paint, you can start with some children's watercolours,
but do it on good aquarel-paper (you can buy these per sheet) then you can work with the pencils on it, and if your paper is good quality you can do several layers.
for a special and not expensive effect you can start with some indian ink (if it's dry it doesn't solve with later added water, so you can use your colours together with it)

for the subject if you don't have inspiration right away, you could do some abstracts like squares, circles, triangles and devide these in different small parts with a few zigzags and so.
then you have a good basis to use your colours.

hi, good to hear you're interested, here's some techniques I learned:

stipple, conté, prismacolor, gouaché, acrylics, oils, pencil, india ink, pastels.

for a start, I'd recommend conté, india ink or pencils, because you work only in the gray scales of a painting, so I think it's easier.

here are some comments:

stipple - you need a technical pen, about 5$, india ink and paper, like "bockingford" $4 a block with about 20 pages, or "illustration cardboard", about $2 a big piece.
check sites like http://www.nolinovak.com/index2.html

hatched filling- also requires a technical pen, india ink and "illustration cardboard", inexpensive and also looks cool.

conté - this is a charcoal in a pencil, hope I explained myself, about $2 and you can use the "bockingford" paper, or canson paper. It's like a pencil but more delicate, you can use an eraser with lots of care,

pastels - don't remember the price, but I remember it's cheap, you can use canson paper.

acrylics- well, someone already talked about them, inexpensive, fast, colorful!

india ink - cheap, you can use bockingford paper, and two or three brushes (also cheap, $1 each)

prismacolor - initially is expensive, about $20 the set with 24 colors, but will last a long time. There are more expensive ones but this is the one I use.
you can use "vegetable paper", or the "bockingford" I mentioned before, and get very nice results. I think the vegetable paper is called vellum in english, it's a traslucent one.


you can try all and find which fits you better, I love to paint, I get lost for hours painting!



just a warning: if you paint for more than 2 hours, DON'T get your hands wet, your hand will be warm from all the painting/drawing. Let it cool for 1 hour before you wash your hands.