Recommended Supply list

Workshop Supply List

You may bring any medium you like and any easel you are comfortable with.If you want to learn to use the acrylic medium, bring:

paint box
minimum 3-color acrylic
paint palette plus white homemade palette for mixing
cotton rags
spray bottle
stool or other support for your open paint box
at least once good large brush made for acrylic
canvases, panels, or boards gessoed with white primer, size recommendations
Professional grade acrylics compared - Lindsey Bourret's Choosing the Acrylic Paint that’s Best for You

Paint Box

Paint Box
Buy a fishing tackle box with molded dividers, one compartment for each color.
I hate taking time to set up a palette for every painting session and I hate to waste paint. With a fully loaded tackle box you’ll be ready to go the minute you set up your easel, AND it keeps the paints fresh from session to session.
Buy your box at a sporting goods store, or from Brass Pro which has great customer sevice. Look for these features, which you won’t find in an Art Bin you purchase at an art supply store:

1. Molded dividers so paint doesn’t leak from one compartment to another.
2. A groove where the top lid closes over the bottom, keeping moisture in.
3. Three trays, though you’ll use only the bottom two for your paints. This leaves an empty top tray where you can lay a sopping wet rag and extra compartments you can fill with acrylic glazing medium or a new color you are trying out.
Storing your box out of direct sunlight between painting sessions, your paint will stay fresh for many weeks.

Cleaning the box
To clean the box, don’t scrape out the paint when it’s wet. Leave as thick a layer of dirty paint as you can, then leave the box open letting the paint dry for a week or more until the paint is hardened all the way through. THEN fill it full of water overnight and the paint will peel right out like leather.

I squeeze enough color into each compartment to last for three or four painting sessions and arrange the colors as I would on a conventional palette. The arrangement isn’t too important as long as you do it the same way every time; this saves precious seconds when you’re mixing.

Spray Bottle is an essential. Stand under a tree if you can. But when you’re in the sun, especially on dry or windy days, you’ll need to lightly but repeatedly mist your paints.

Folding Easel

Get the “original” half-size Jullian French easel. Mine is many years old. Avoid the cheaper Plein Air easel made by Jullian or any knockoff brands. The Jullian will be cheaper in the long run, and you’ll learn to love your reliable old friend.
I slip the easel into a small backpack, putting my water bottle in the pack and folding stool under the top straps.

Folding Stool or Table I use a simple folding stool to support the paint box if I’m hiking any distance. Lately, I’ve been buying inexpensive folding camp stools and removing the end caps from the legs, then inserting lengths of dowel and attaching them with duct tape. This saves my back by putting the paint box high enough so I don’t have to bend over.

Palette

Make a throw-away palette out of two pieces of foam board or cardboard, cut to fit inside your folded French easel drawer. Hinge the two pieces together with duct tape to make a folding palette.
This is lightweight and cheap, and can be used for months until paint buildup renders it too heavy. No need to gesso it. I set this open palette crosswise on the drawer of the French easel, open the fishing tackle box crosswise on the stool, and then pick up bits of paint from the tackle box and mix them on the palette.
This frees up my hands so I can hold the brush in one hand and a good cotton paint rag in the other.

Canvas

I love white canvas that will show brilliantly through a thin wash. Synthetic canvas is great for using with acrylic, although I have come to prefer linen.
I like canvas on panel because they are light and take up less room when traveling.
I highly recommend linen-covered panels from Tim Giles of New Traditions Art Panels, 801-825-7806.
Tim’s email address is: newtraditions@bigplanet.com
These panels are not cheap (though they cost less than making them yourself), but you will become a better painter the first time you use one. They are archival, high quality, and extremely lightweight for their size.
I use the AC 14 portrait linen surface primed for acrylic.
This linen has the most beautiful surface I’ve ever found, slightly rough—just enough to grab the paint—but with a fine weave. You can repaint over and over and the surface never dulls.

Paints

I use mostly Golden heavy body acrylics.

My palette of colors consists mostly of cadmium, pyrrole, and quinacridone colors.
You can simulate any earth tone by mixing these colors, but if you use only earth tones you can never get a bright orange.
Now that pyrrole colors are on the market, I try to use them. Unlike cadmium colors they are not toxic.

Painting with high quality paints with excellent tinting ability is an absolute necessity. It’s impossible to achieve great results with mediocre materials. Avoid student grade paints!!! They have more filler and less pigment.
Avoid any paint called a “hue,” which is another way of saying the color has been approximated with cheaper pigments. There are exceptions to this, such as Hooker’s Green Hue, concocted because the original is not light fast.

Limited Palettes
A limited palette can be a great learning tool. Color mixing with a restricted palette is a huge step toward being able to see and replicate colors swiftly and without leaning on the left brain and its knowledge of “warm, cool, color charts, color wheels, primaries or complementaries.”

Mixing without using color names is a big part of this. The idea is to learn to mix colors the way “Understood Betsy” learned to drive a horse, by simply jerking the rein in the direction she wanted the horse to go rather than figuring out which was her left or right hand.

But when you work with a very limited palette for some time, you no longer really see the colors in front of you.

Not every limited palette gives a full range of color! For example the infamous limited palette touted by many, consisting of ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow light, and alizarin crimson, doesn’t allow for a true lime green or chartreuse due to the reddish quality of ultramarine blue, and doesn’t allow for clean pure purples, violets, or magentas due to the brownish tint of alizarin crimson.

Starting to paint with a very limited palette and later moving to a full color range will let you become good at composition by focusing on value; later you can open up your eyes and brain so you’ll begin to see those colors in nature when you give yourself more colors to choose from.

It’s possible to come close to a full color range with only 5 or 6 tubes of paint, an inexpensive way to try out acrylic without a huge dollar investment.

Add Titanium White, 8 oz or more, to all these palettes:

3-Color Limited Palette
phthalo blue, red shade #1260
C.P. cadmium yellow light #1120
quinacridone red #1310

4-Color Limited Palette
phthalo blue, red shade #1260
hansa yellow light #1180
naphthol red light #1210
quinacridone magenta #1305

6-Color Palette (Marcia’s choice: best color range with fewest tubes)
cobalt blue   #1140
turquois (phthalo)   #1390
C.P. cadmium yellow light #1120
C.P. cadmium orange #1070 or pyrrole orange #1276
pyrrole red #1277
primary magenta #1510

Marcia’s full palette (quickly mix any color you see)
Cadmium Yellow Light   #1120
Cadmium Yellow Medium   #1130
Cadmium Orange or Pyrrole Orange   #1070
Pyrrole Red   #1277
Primary Magenta       #1510
Hooker’s Green Historic hue      #1454
Chrome Oxide Green      #1060
Permanent Green Light   #1250
Dark Turquois (phthalo)   #1390
Phthalo blue, green shade   #1255
Cobalt Blue   #1140
Dioxazine Purple       #1150
Violet Oxide   #1405

Brushes

A good brush is a tool that will help you easily accomplish what you want. My favorites are the Isacryl brushes by Isabey. These are synthetic, but they have plenty of snap and retain their shape for years. You should have at least one large (1” or wider, about a #16) quality brush. I like filberts because they are short and stiff and yet get thinner near the tips; I like to carve shapes with their thin edges.
For your smallest brushes, buy flats rather than brights or filberts. In the small sizes, a bright will splay almost immediately; because it is proportionately longer, a flat isn’t so likely to do this.
I keep some old bristle brushes around for times when I want a fuzzier, easier edge. If you use both oils and acrylics, or if you have a lot of leftover bristle brushes you formerly used for oils, they can be great for acrylics. All that oil paint will have conditioned them beautifully and they’ll far outlast bristle brushes you buy and use just for acrylics.

Rags

Please use old washrags, torn-up towels, all-cotton t-shirts, or cloth diapers rather than even the highest quality paper towel. Paper towels don’t work for my method of acrylic painting. You need a substantial absorbent rag in your left hand at all times.