Art Materials & Supplies

I paint with both oils and acrylics. Although some people do use acrylics successfully outdoors, the fast drying time of acrylic paint doesn’t suit the way I work so all of my outdoor plein air work is done with oils. Back in the studio, I use both (but never on the same painting of course). Oils are a joy to work with. Nothing can compare to the way oil paint mixes and blends, the only downside is long drying time. Oil paint can take days or weeks to be dry to the touch, and months or even years before it’s dry enough to varnish. On the other hand, acrylic paints can dry in minutes. The downside of that is you can’t mix and blend acrylic paints the way you can with oils. But the fast drying lets you build layers and glazes easily, and fairly quickly - something would take weeks or months to accomplish in oils. Many of my acrylics are build up with various acrylic mediums and gels. I build up some texture with the gels, and apply layers of glazes with thinner mediums.

Art materials that I use:

Acrylic paint brands: Liquitex, and Golden. Golden has a good range of gels and mediums that I like.

Oil paint brands: Windsor & Newton

Brushes: Many! I’m always buying brushes, and haven’t settled on any one brand as my favorite. I recommend that people experiment with a lot of different brushes, and don’t even limit yourself to brushes for applying paint: painting knives, rags and fingers all work well. (Using caution because some paint pigments are toxic).

Varnish: I use Golden MSA to varnish both oils and acrylics. MSA comes in gloss, satin and matte. Their matte varnish is incredibly flat, and their satin is what I would normally consider matte. I don’t care for a high gloss varnish, so I mix their gloss and satin to get the surface I want.

Easel: For painting plein air, I have a home made paint box which carries most of my paints, canvas panels, and mounts on a tripod similar to the "Open Box M" and EASyL easels which you can buy commercially. It’s a compact unit so I can carry everything I need in a small knapsack. I’ll get some photos of it online eventually.


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