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> 1) If I just want to practice, do I have to size the wood, or can I just go straight to 2-3 coats of acrylic gesso before painting?

I buy canvas paper for that. Ex: https://www.amazon.com/Fredrix-3501-Canvas-Pads-16-Inch/dp/B000YQGG3A



> 2) Also for practice, does it matter if I use something tougher like marine plywood, or is normal plywood okay? What's the cheapest hard surface I can get away with practicing?

it does not matter if you want to trash it. it should be something like a regular surface though.

> 3) For more polished attempts, is 1/8" thick marine plywood suitable for pieces that are 9x12"? (sized and gesso'd) I know warping is an issue for larger pieces, but considering 9x12" isn't that big, and marine plywood is pretty expensive, I'm hoping it's okay.

It's probably ok. I'd spend some time studying the business of board prep and proper woods.

> 4) I've been having what I call "false starts" because I'm so afraid of wasting such costly materials. My background so far has been digital, so nearly everything needed to be bought. Is this anxiety normal, and any advice on how to get over it?

Yes.

Just paint. Start with black and white, then add color after you feel comfortable.

> 5) Are there any sort of containers to avoid using when storing mediums or solvents? I currently have glass jars with metal lids, but would plastic jars with plastic lids be all right, or glass jars with the airtight lids lined with rubber?

Glass jars w/ cork would be good - you can get those from some new age stores which do incense & oils n stuff. https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Glass-Bottle-Cork-Top-3-4oz/dp/B007EEQ0BI

I buy Hobby Lobby eyedropper bottles, myself. I fill the bottle and store the main jar in a darker place.

https://www.hobbylobby.com/Art-Supplies/Painting-Supplies/Palettes-Tools/50mL-Dropper-Bottles/p/57410

> 6) I have a very tiny room, so space is a problem for me. Is it okay to have my painting area in the same room as where I sleep if I take precautions? (not leaving solvent or medium out, washing or dipping brushes, storing rags in a metal container/washing rags at the end of the day)?

Linseed oil isn't an issue. Only the solvents are problematic in terms of offgassing. Make sure your rags are stored in a way that doesn't cause fire.

> 7) Any advice on where and how to cut costs? I've taken to using some cheap materials for some stuff, but everything else seems so costly. Here's my starter set checklist:

> ~ Gamsol

Good solvent. Don't cut costs and use hardware store stuff.

> ~ Galkyd/Liquin

You don't need this.

> ~ Winsor & Newton limited palette (6 tubes)

k.

> ~ Golden Gesso + sandpaper + 2 varnishing brushes

To be honest, I just buy canvases from Dick Blick. I have done the gesso and prep, and it doesn't do anything for me most of the time.

> ~ A set of hog hair brushes, filberts, flats, rounds in small and medium

Can skip the filberts. You'll probably want large.

I would not skimp on brushes. I advise Dick Blick Master's line of red sables and hog hairs. They are a big part of what makes you able to do controllable work.


> ~ palette (cheap piece of glass)

I use a $7 hobby lobby palette.

> ~ cheap canvas boards for practice (inquiring at a local hardware for wood panels to save money)

seems legit.

> ~ 2x palette knives

You probably should get a set so you can figure out how you want to manipulate paint, unfortunately. Saving that: yes, 2x is good.

> ~ a handful of airtight jars and containers

You typically don't need those....

> ~ paper towels and used clothing for rags

Yep.

> ~ DIY'd: brush rack for holding/drying used brushes, table easel

Yep. I cut a semicircle out of an amazon box to lay the brushes flat for holding drying brushes (this way water doesn't run into the wood while it dries); for actual longer term storage I have some glass containers from hobby lobby. If you eat peanut butter faster than I do, you can buy glass jars of peanut butter and use them instead.

Oil painting is a spendy hobby to get started.

I would prefer good brushes, good oil/solvent, and a few but good tubes of paint over anything else. You can cheap out on pretty much everything else; if you can get good wood and properly prep, that's close to ideal for painting longjevity once you can figure out how to cradle it.

Good paint lasts, doesn't have useless additives, and behaves well. I always recommend using single pigment paint for reasons of controllability. Good oil doesn't get in your way, good brushes help you. For budget conscious painting, I believe Gamsol is the best company dollar for dollar, but you can do yourself a solid with Art Treehouse as well.

All this reminds me, I have to put together a "learner's" order for a family member who's into art. :)

Canvas panels are a good, inexpensive surface to work on. They come pre-primed, and don't take up a lot of space compared to stretched canvas. They come in lots of sizes and you can get them for less than a buck a panel. These are not great panels but for starting out, they're just fine. You can improve them by adding a layer of heavy body gesso. 8x10, 9x12, and 11x14 are good sizes to work with starting out; they're not so big that they take a huge amount of paint to cover, but big enough to give you room to work with.

Bristle brushes are great for oil paint as they really let you push the paint around; you can get some softer brushes later, but a good set of bristles are all you really need to get started. Robert Simmons Signet brushes are very decent brushes for the price; pretty much any 2 of the K,L,M, or N brush packs will get you started.

Don't buy the cheapest oil paint, but there are some decent student paints out there. Gamblin's 1980 line is probably the best, I think. Winsor Newton's Winton line is hit or miss, depending on the color, but is generally okay if that's your only option. I wouldn't go cheaper than that. If you want to go better without breaking the bank, Gamblin and Winsor Newton's normal lines are both good, as is M Graham. A small palette is all you need starting out; titanium white, ivory black, ultramarine blue, hansa yellow, pyrrol red (or Winsor Newton's Winsor red), and burnt umber make a good all-around starter palette that you can do a lot with and are all non-toxic colors. Cadmium yellow and cadmium red are both great colors for a starter palette but have toxicity issues; you can use them both perfectly safely if you use them mindfully, but some people - with children or animals in the house that might get into the paints, for example - understandably prefer to avoid the problem altogether.

The issue of safety, though, brings up the question of your workspace. Depending on how well ventilated it is will determine if you need to work solvent free or not, and that'll effect what other stuff you need to get.

To be honest, $40 won't get you much as far as quality paints go. Just one 37mL tube of paint (depending on the color, of course) costs between $15-40. Sure, student grade paints are cheaper, but that's also because they're for students - impure pigments, cheaper binders, rougher body. However, u/444Rob444's suggestion is great, as Gamblin is an excellent company. I wouldn't want to use those paints myself, but the reviewers seem really happy with them. My other suggestion would be to buy her a book on oil painting. This one is my favorite, although it's astronomically expensive on Amazon. :(

Is this the book you’re referring to?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501327526
I saw many books under the name “Munsell” and wanted to be sure.

> I personally hardly ever use straight black onto my palette I usually mix it.

Gamblin’s founder expressed the same and made a “Chromatic Black,” which is a mixture of Quinacridone Red and Phthalo Emerald. I haven’t used it yet but I picked up a tube recently.

> But I have a friend who mixes 1-10 value scale on his palette when painting to get very scientific on what shade and tint for each one of his mixtures he wants.

Woah. Is that where the book comes in? How does one go about doing that?

As for the pigments, I just recently bought a ton of Gamblin colors, but my starter set is Utrecht. I plan to go all Gamblin, but don’t want to waste the many multiple Utrecht tubes I was gifted.
Except for the Utrecht starter tubes which I have to go home to account for, I have:

• Gamblin Radiant pigments (all eight)
  
• Gamblin metallic pigments (four)
  
• Radiant White
  
• Zinc White (Titanium White with Utrecht)
  
• Cool White
  
• Warm White
  
• Chromatic Black
  
• Payne Grey (which is a black, I understand?)
  
• Portland Grey Light
  
• Portland Grey Medium
  
• Cobalt Green
  
• Cadmium Green
  
• Viridian
  
• Cobalt Violet
  
  I read about differences with Titanium White and Zinc White, and even a Titanium Zinc White, so I hoped to know more from experience about mixing with the two.

Hi - kind of depends on what you are going to paint. In my experience I've needed a LOT more brushes than I thought I would, so tend to go for lots of cheaper sets - something like this as a basic set but then buying different sized sets with just round, filbert, flat, angled types of brushes. I would recommend getting some BIG brushes, and I've had teachers recommend the type of paintbrushes you can get at hardware/DIY stores etc.

A paint set is also good but the alternative is to look into limited pallettes - for example if you are doing portraits you might find it helpful just to buy the zorn pallette, but for landscapes etc you will need more varied colours. If you buy a set I've found it usual to buy another larger tube of white (either the same type of white in the set or a different one) as you will probably use a lot of white. I wouldn't buy the cheapest paint sets, Windsor and Newton is good.

I think that book might be the older version. But I’m not quite sure. The New Munsell® Student Color Set 3rd Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1609011562/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_jOZJBb32FK7MW
This is the copy I own.

The technique that my friend uses actually isn’t in the book. This book mostly focuses on the actual pigments in the paint, what color theory (we use as painters) for mixtures and color logic. Saturation and intensity as well as chroma.
The 1-10 value mixing is a fairly old technique, I have a feeling you would be able to find more information about it online, I’ll search to see if maybe my friend can send me some information.

You have a really large range of pigments on your palette. I think you should read about complimentary colors, and analogous colors. That will help greatly with mixing. For when you mix complimentary colors you can make all those greys you have on your palette.
If you read your tube of paints it will actually tell you what pigments are in it, as well as the oil they used to bind that paint together. If you look up the pigment on the tube, for instance you might have a blue that says PB for purple blue then a number on it which describes the intensity value and saturation from straight out the tube.
There’s just so much science into this it’s easy to get lost. I’d recommend maybe cutting down your palette to a smaller portion that way you really familiarize yourself with your mixtures. If not, I’d recommend making a giant color chart to see.
I’m fairly knew to reddit and I don’t really know how to maneuver around and such, but if you send me a personal message with your email I can send you documents and exercises of paint

I think we have talked about this before but Odorless Mineral Spirits is a solvent that is pretty low in toxicity (you would have to drink it or continually huff it in a small room to get sick from it).

When you said that you are using Cobra oil do you mean that is the brand of oil paint that you are using? If so, you don't need linseed oil. Linseed oil is added to oil paint to extend drying time and lower viscosity. If the paints you are using are water soluble not only will the linseed oil probably give you problems mixing but you could just use water to lower the viscosity of the paint.

I always recommend these artists loft brushes. However if you have a Michael's near you buy them directly from the store. I use them all the time but the store price is $5. I wouldn't buy them for $8.99. However if you are looking to go a step up Princeton is a good brand. I consider brush quality less important than paint quality so really I would just recommend a couple synthetic bristle brushes (Taklon) and a couple hog hair brushes (you can use synthetic hog hair). The Taklon will give you nice smooth strokes and the hog hair will give you texture and make it easier to push around thicker paint.

*note: when you first use a brush you will almost always have a few bristles fall out no matter the quality.

The order of operations you are using to draw will work for oil painting fine.

Try getting a skin colored paint like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001E1TGYU/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1523248801&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=flesh+tone+oil+paint and then just adjusting the color as you paint. (I haven't actually tried that exact paint, but I hope you get the point.)

Or, try mainly yellow and white, with a little bit of red and blue. Green is helpful sometimes too. With the red, blue, and green go easy. I'm talking just the slightest amount. (Add a little extra red though) There will end up being a lot of white in the paint that gets applied. It's hard to avoid the white.

I got this set of gamblin 1980 paints from Amazon. The 1980 line are high quality student grade, perfect for beginners. Extra 1980 paints from Jerry's Artarama (quinacridone magenta, burnt umber, burnt sienna, blush, and also warm white from the artist grade line. They sell the intro 1980 set on there too which is currently cheaper than Amazon. Also got a couple mediums on here (galkyd & galkyd gel). From Trekell I got gamsol mineral spirits, linseed oil soap for cleaning brushes, gamvar satin varnish, varnish brush. From Asel silicoil for gamsol/ cleaning brushes during printing and acrylic gesso for ground (you can get these from anywhere though). Other supplies from Dollar store: airtight jar w/ water for dirtied paper towels/ rags, nitrile gloves, 2 glass panel 8x10 picture frames (to use glass n tape together to be palette), paper towels/shop towels. 400 grit sand sponge to sand gesso from Amazon. palette knives from Amazon. Paint brushes/ canvas panels from Walmart/was gifted other artist grade brushes/canvases. Use the honey extension on your browser to help w/ coupons. It's taken a while to gather/be gifted these supplies; it can be a pricey medium but I think oil painting is absolutely worth it.

I've never painted on wood with oil, only acrylics. I'm intrigued tho. I use Arteza Watercolor paper (I bought exactly this: https://www.amazon.com/ARTEZA-Watercolor-Pressed-Painting-Sketchbook/dp/194757504X)
I am one of those people who don't like completely smooth haha. I like my paper gritty lol.

Yeah, watercolor pads/books/paper should be fine.

Most regular sketchbooks are pretty thin paper, so you kinda have to seek out thicker stuff. My local Hobby Lobby and Michaels didn't have anything over I think 110gsm, except for the canson stuff that is ring bound. The book I'm using is Stillman & Birn Delta

Fredrix 3501 Canvas Pads, 12 by 16-Inch https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000YQGG3A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_i391DbXPFMMA5

This is the brand I use. I take masking tape and tape it at the edges to an art board.

Another nice thing about them is that once they are dry, I can store them much much easier.

For large enough quantities of paint, you can buy empty tubes and put the paint in there. Any good sealing plastic food storage bin (Lock & Lock) or glass jar would work too.

For smaller amounts, Paint Savers work really well to keep the paint good for at least a week. Paint Savers PS7 Paint Covers https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008UGB4T2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_vV-mDb8SADZVJ

They have (had?) their own official website too where you can order, but I can't seem to find it.

You can also get a palette that seals air tight. I have this neutral grey plastic one:

Mijello TruColor Neutral Grey Palette - Artelier Airtight 9.5x13.25 in https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005G3ZRAY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_TZ-mDbPXP1GJ3

If you're looking for cheaper options, there's always canvas paper too to practice on - something like https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000YQGG3A/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I use odorless turpentine which is a solvent substitute. I choose that because it doesn’t give off any smell and is safer to use than other solvents. I would recommend that to start if you can get your hands on it. If not linseed oil works just the same.
I do not believe olive oil or sunflower oil will work. They MIGHT thin your paint but they will not dry well (or at all) and they will likely yellow the painting if they do dry.

So this is my second shot at painting. Ever. And I dont feel like it came out as well as my first. I feel like I'm having a lot of trouble with my 1" and 2" brushes. They are such low quality that I think it's bringing down the potential of my paintings. Suggestions I'd decent quality brushes to use?

Link to the ones I have: Darice Bristle Paint Brush (set of 3) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002V3EQUE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_vLhvCb34Z67JD

Because of the trouble I was having with my brushes I just started laying down random colour. I dont think it looks terrible, but I was just practicing with the palette knife and the fan brush. I stopped watching the video and just started laying down paint for practice.

I have been using canvas pads to practice; they are much less expensive than canvases. I haven't tried priming them, but they're handy for getting the same sensation. [Nine bucks for ten sheets, no shill.](https://www.amazon.com/Fredrix-Canvas-Pads-12/dp/B000YQEBPA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1524680115&sr=8-4&keywords=canvas+painting+pad)