Oil Paints: 

 

Oil paints in the following colours. Brand is up to you, but I recommend a decent moderately priced brand like Art Spectrum (Australian made), Langridge (Australian made) or a very high quality brand like Michael Harding or Old Holland. You use much less of the high quality brands because they are so highly pigmented so they last a lot longer. The cheaper brands are harder and more frustrating to use and hard to get good results from even if you’re an experienced painter. Buy the best you can afford and don’t put too much of it onto the palette.  

 

• Titanium white (get a bigger one)

• Lemon yellow

• Cadmium yellow

• Yellow Ochre

• Cadmium Orange 

• Cadmium Red

• Alizarin Crimson (or a cheaper version of it)

• Raw umber

• Burnt umber. 

• Ultramarine Blue

• Cobalt Blue (if you can afford it. Not an absolute necessity)

• Ivory Black

 

Brushes: 

 

The same deal as the paint. Go for the medium to high quality. Get an assortment of hogsbristle filbert shaped brushes in sizes 2 through to 10 (Jasart is an ok brand for Hogsbristles), get a variety of synthetic filberts or flats in sizes 2-6 and purchase one good sable (animal fur) ‘round’ brush in a size 2. These sables are expensive but invaluable so take good care of it. Some nice brands are Da Vinci, Old Holland, Neef or Rosemary & Co. 

 

To paint on:  

 

Purchase a pad of Archer’s oil painting canvas sheets (primed paper). Mont Matre also make a cheap version that is not bad once you’ve primed it. Then put 2 or 3 coats of house sealant paint or gesso over each sheet to seal them really well. When you’re ready to paint, tape the sealed paper to a piece of wood with a few pieces of Scotch Tape and pop it on your easel. 

 

Alternatively, you can buy a big board of Masonite at bunnings and get them to cut it up for you into a variety of sizes/shapes. Then prime them with the house sealant and you’ll be set for painting surfaces for ages. 

 

Solvents/Oils:

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You will need a nice odourless solvent like odourless turps from bunnings or Langridge Solvent 75. 

You’ll also need a little jar of refined linseed oil. You won’t be using much, but you will still need it. 

 

Miscellaneous:

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You’ll need lots of old rags from the garage, nothing fluffy. Old T-Shirts are great or old cotton sheets cut up into pieces about as big as a man’s-sized hanky. You could also use paper towel, but this is not an environmentally sound option if you’re going to be doing a lot of painting. 

 

You can buy a cheap wooden pallet from Riot, Roni’s or Eckersleys. Wipe it over with a little linseed oil before you use it. When you’ve finished painting scrape off the bulk of the paint blobs and then get a rag and rub whatever colour is left on your palette into your palette until it’s a mission brown colour, pop a bit more linseed oil over the top and then leave it to dry. It will eventually build up a lovely brown shiny patina, which will make using it an absolute pleasure.

 

Alternatively you can use an big old photo frame, put a piece of mid-tone grey paper in it instead of a photo and use it as a glass palette.  Very easy to clean off old paint with a paint scraper. 

 

Palette knife:

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You’ll also need a diamond shaped palette knife. Nothing fancy or expensive required. You can get a decent one for about $10 in Officeworks (don’t buy their synthetic paint brushes though, they fall apart very fast).