About two years ago I got into oil painting because that's a sensible thing to do. I had just moved into my cupboard, chambre de bonne, maid flat in central Paris. I was feeling so much better after having gone through hell in a shared house with a dodgy landlady who refused to give me a rental contract and receipts. I had a job lined up in the suburbs and things were really turning around. While walking from the metro to my flat I walked past a cheap junk shop. They're officially called bazar but if I were to say a 99p shop you'd get the picture, that kind of place where everything is everywhere, but the prices were all different. They had painting stuff in the window, canvases, oil paints, brushes. I think it was probably aimed at the children going back to school in September, but I'm not done with growing up yet. I got a pack of oil paints and a canvas for under 10€, there was a brush in the oil paints and I thought it would be good enough. I then went to the supermarket and got a bottle of Martini. It took several days to finish completely but I made an Irn Bru can, I even got retweeted by their Twitter.
Within a fortnight I had returned to buy a pack of brushes and another canvas. I made an orange and blue planet called Brutopia. Not long after I went back for a third canvas and made Davaar island which went through every season before I called it quits and left it as it was. With my first three paintings finished I had started looking up advice online about buying new paint. I was running dangerously low on white. One of the pieces of advice I found was to buy big tubes of white. I was also introduced to turpentine, a clear smelly liquid used to thin oil paint. I went to a proper art store this time, to get a big tube of white and the terps and found another canvas. Which is still in my flat half finished, I was working on the Bruffel Tower. A few weeks later I got big tubes of red, blue and yellow as I mix most of my colours.
Not long after this I got one of those boyfriend things, and I started spending a lot of time at his place rather than mine. I went quite a while without painting until we went to an art shop near his and got some paints from Peabo and I have been using their turpentine since the beginning. I only got four, white, red, yellow and blue. I highly recommend these paints for beginner artists like myself, they're good quality, thick enough and pigmented. I've done quite a lot with them and I am very happy. I started working on this orange landscape with them that I still haven't finished. I find the Pebeo colours don't get muddied no matter how much I mix into them. I also completed my thistle painting with them which was my first real painting that I was proud of. |
| The Thistle. |
About a month ago I saw a promotion on some paints in a local art shop, I snapped them up and got my first high quality canvas, after messing about I had done a beautiful painting of Nessie. Time will only tell how good at this I get. I've recently started a Patreon so if you're wanting to support my art work then you can do so. I'm trying to figure out what perks I should offer, but it's all early days.
ACTUAL ADVICE!
- Buy big tubes of white. Consider buying big tubes of the primary colours too as if you mix your own you'll need more of these.
- Open your window, those terps fumes get pretty strong.
- If you start with cheap supplies you'll not have long-lasting art, but it won't always be worth keeping.
- Debate buying cheap paints vs expensive paints. I have about four sets of different paints lying around. My first cheap set, as only the white, red and yellow were finished. The mega tubes of white, red, blue and yellow. The set I got for the boyfriends. The set my mum got me for my birthday. The nice set of fine oils I treated myself to.
