Questions often asked part two
1. Can I Mix Different Brands of Paint?
You may mix student quality paints with professional paint without risk, but not oil paints with acrylics. Oil on dry acrylics is fine, but not vice versa.
If you want to mix colours, start with two (cool and warm) reds, two blues, two yellows, and a white. You want two of each primary colour, one a warm version and one a cool. This will give you a larger range of colours when mixing than just one version of each primary. If you use warm colours only, or cool colours, without interchanging them, you will avoid neutral greys and mudding. This however may be desirable in some cases.
If you don't want to mix all your colours, also get an earth brown (burnt sienna or burnt umber), a golden earth brown (golden ochre), and a green (phthalo green).
Colour is essential in painting and the more you know about the colours you're using, the more you can get from it. Don't let the word "theory" intimidate you. The fundamentals of colour mixing aren't particularly tricky to understand.
2. Should I Paint on Paper or Canvas or What?
You can paint on practically anything provided the paint will stick and provided the paint won't rot the surface.
Acrylic paint can be painted on paper, card, wood, or canvas, with or without a primer being used first. Watercolour can be painted on paper, card, or special watercolour canvas.
A support for oil paint needs to be primed first (you may use two layers of Gesso), otherwise the oil in the paint will eventually rot the paper or threads of the canvas (Some paint pigments are chemical). You can buy pads of paper primed for oil paper, which are perfect for doing studies or if your storage space if limited.
3. How Many Paint Brushes Do I Need?
As few or as many as you like. if you're painting with oils, you can have a different brush for each colour, so that you don’t need to dry your brushes frequently. I mostly use just one brush, a specifically a No.10 size Filbert with bristle hairs ( made of pig hairs), rinsing it clean regularly as I'm painting. Don’t throw your worn out brushes because they ideal for some effects, grass for example
4. How Thick Should the Paint Be?
You may paint with as thick or thin paint as you desire. You can change the consistency of paint with a painting medium (ideal medium: Linoleum- poppy oil-stand oil- retouch varnish and turpentine in equal parts) to make it thinner, and apply colour evenly.
