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[sleepingfingers]

I have had the luck to paint with a close friend of mine recently and it has provided me an amazing relaxation tool.  I am hoping I can find some help in what I would need to get started solo.  I have already made my own easel, frames, and canvas stretcher.  I am looking to spend somewhere in the area of 100 bucks.  Not sure if it helps but I live in MA if it helps with retailer recommendations.  My goal is not to paint for quality, just entertainment.
thanks
adam

[Lines]

I would recommend going with acrylic over oil, as it's better for beginners (can be cleaned up with water) and is more cost effective. You should probably be able to find Liquitex Basics, which is a good paint, and be able to get a medium or two (I recommend gloss, matte, and extender base, which keeps your paint from drying too fast). You should also be able to get a few brushes and it's personal preference what type of hair you should get. A disposable palette would also be good for you and be pretty inexpensive and you should also probably get a palette knife (the straight kind for mixing paint).

Colors I recommend for starting out with: Titanium white, ebony black, yellow ochre, cadmium red, hansa yellow or cadmium yellow, pthalo green, pthalo blue, ultramarine blue, and crimson red. This is basically what you need to make any color you want, but if you want metallics, neons, or any other color, you could get those too.

[KharBevNor]

Fuck crimson red, crimson lake is where it's at.

[Lines]

Crimson red was the closest color to alizarin crimson I could find that the brand I listed makes, which is why I put phtalo green instead of viridian. (And like the OP says, he's a beginner, and I don't think he needs to know color theory when he's just starting out and wants to experiment.) Any red that has the word "crimson" attached to it is a good red and you can get whatever brand of paint you want.

Also, just so you know sleepingfingers, any color that has the word "hue" attached to it is fine, but it will be a little more transparent than colors that don't, so you may want to add a bit of white if you want it more opaque.

[leperphiliac]

If you're going with acrylic, synthetic bristles are probably your best bet. Be sure you don't let the paint dry on the bristles when  you're done, cuz then it's impossible to get off.

[EMC]

I go with Acrylics myself. I normally do massive Acrylic paintings with black sharpies (cartoony style) they dry quick though, SOMETIMES it's good.

You'll just have to play with some media, I suggest going with the base colours and trying to see what you like.

like buy the media but only the yellow, blue and red.

or go with the new modern twist and just buy a cheap $50 pen tablet from say, Walmart, to see if you're comfortable.

[Alex C]

Yeah, if you want alizarin crimson you often have to move up to the fancy pants artist grade stuff that you really have no use for when you're just starting out, and reds tend to be rather expensive paints even if you're going for Liquitex Basics (and I wouldn't go any cheaper than that). Also, as far as palettes go, I actually just went down to the hardware store and asked if they had any thin scrap plexiglass they had laying around and then scored it with my utility knife and snapped it down into useful sized chunks. Pretty inexpensive, if they even bother charging you at all.

[sleepingfingers]

Thanks for all the recommendations.  You veterans may be surprised but honest and simple answers are immensely helpful to someone in their post college phase.  I have had great fun in turning out things that may never make it onto a wall, but has given me great pleasure.
Thanks Again!

[Mazlow01]

I actually just started painting also. I suck(Evidenced by the crappy lines in the painting I use as an avatar) but it is very relaxing, the biggest problem I have found(besides the art itself) is getting the ferrule completely clean. Any ideas on how to best accomplish this? I use Liquitex Basics, and synthetic brushes.

[Lines]

Since you're using acrylics, put some soap in your hand and work the bristles around on your palm and then rinse when your soap is all dirty. Repeat until there is no color being rinsed/washed out of your brush. This is what I do and though paint can stain your bristles (this happens with my white synthetic brushes when I use blue paint), this cleans them pretty well.

[Alex C]

Yeah, I'm afraid it's just kind of a pain and there's really no answer but dilligence, especially with flat brushes, since you can really load up even the little flats with a ridiculous amount of paint. Like Linds said though, soap works fine, and I keep bars of lava soap around since it's mildly gritty and great for cleaning up your hands and your palette (if you really bother with cleaning the palette super thoroughly each time; I'm kind of a neat freak), although for the brushes I rather doubt it matters too much what soap you use if you're using synthetics (I love synthetics, personally). You really don't want to leave your brushes in standing water either or using heat to dry them, by the way; if you really want to make brushes last you'll have to get used to rinsing them fairly often as you work to keep the paint farther up the farrules from drying in as you work with the wet stuff near the tip. You'll probably also want a simple dollar store mister bottle to keep the point on your palette moist as you work too, if you don't already have one.

[blaha 41]

Why has no one mentioned water-soluble oil paints? No matter how good I got as a painter I could not find a way to deal with acrylics... everything seemed so flat.

[Lines]

I have never used them and don't really plan to. (I rarely paint as it is.) Besides, there are a lot of mediums for acrylic paint that can be used to acheive the same effects as oils.

[KharBevNor]

Any ideas on how to best accomplish this?

Try not being so anally retentive.

[Alex C]

I hate oils, but I'll admit they are a bit easier to blend once you've got the paint on the canvas. I still prefer to make up for that by using acrylics with extenders and by adding lots and lots of layers and simply trying harder to come up with the right mix of colors on the palette in the first place though. Oils are simply too fussy and take too long to dry for me.

[KharBevNor]

GOUACHE GOUACHE GOUACHE

[Lines]

Gouache is the paint from HELL.

[KharBevNor]

Just because you suck with it?

That's not very considered.

[Lines]

No, because I hate it. It's the evil hybrid of watercolor and tempera.

[KharBevNor]

There is nothing you could expensively accomplish over the course of three days with oil paints that I couldn't do in an hour with gouache for half the price. Or I could do a thinly washed watercolour. Versatile shit.

[Alex C]

Only thing I don't like about gouache is how different things look from wet to dry, but that's probably something that could be readily conquered with more experience.

[Spluff]

I hate gouache. It's impossible to do a realist painting with gouache, which is pretty much the type of painting I do - therefore it's not for me.

[KharBevNor]

I hate gouache. It's impossible to do a realist painting with gouache,

Lol, what?

[Lines]

I have just never liked gouache nor really seen the use in learning to like it. I love watercolors and I like using oil and acrylic on occasion, but as I don't really paint very much, I won't waste money on paint I don't like. I'll stick to using watercolor if I ever feel the need to paint or draw with a wet medium. I don't enjoy painting very often, but even if I did, I'd still hate gouache.

[Spluff]

I hate gouache. It's impossible to do a realist painting with gouache,

Lol, what?

Gouache is traditionally used to create flat areas of color quickly. It's a lot harder to do something photorealisticly than it would be with, say, oils.

Or at least thats my experience.