hi there my name is fei from winged canvas and today i'm going to show you the materials that
you will need if you are a complete beginner starting to use acrylics acrylics are super
super versatile they're a great medium for beginners it's almost very very hard to mess
up with acrylics because you can just paint over them the one thing about acrylics i need
to warn you about especially if you're a parent is that it does not come off clothing very easily
so make sure that you have yourself a good apron or an old t-shirt when you're painting and
you know stay away from expensive furniture so if you are just getting started please please do not
go on amazon or to your local art store and buy a huge set of 48 colors they usually come in those
small tubes they look amazing and very appealing you get all these colors under the rainbow but
chances are you will not use most of those colors you will run out of your white and your yellow
really quickly and a lot of the other colors will go to waste they're more for paint by numbers
so if you really want to learn how to mix colors i would suggest getting the minimum amount of
colors instead of the maximum okay so starting with paints i would recommend getting a big tube
or a big jar of white so titanium white is a really good versatile white look at this huge
jar of white that i have get yourself a big tube because this color runs out the most
second color that runs out the most is your yellow this is a primary yellow if you can't find primary
yellow you can find cadmium yellow light or lemon yellow all of those are pretty similar but your
primary yellow is one of your primary colors so very very necessary grab yourself one of those
and then the next primary color you might think is red but it actually is magenta so magenta is a
true primary color usually there's darker magentas and brighter magenta so get the brightest one that
you can find if you can't find a magenta primary red is your next best bet and then for your blue
i like to use primary blue or if you can't find primary blue phthalo blue is a really really
good substitute and with these three colors you will be able to mix all of the colors
under the rainbow and then the last color i would suggest is a black so i have a big jar of black
you don't need a big jar you can get away with a small jar because black is very very strong
so you don't really need a lot of it if you want to buy more colors the only other color
i would recommend getting just because it's very convenient is a brown i have burnt umber so burnt
umber is a nice rich brown and it'll just save you a lot of time if you don't want to mix brown
every single time so grab yourself a burnt umber when you're working with acrylics having a medium
is really helpful because it allows you to thin out the paint without using water so a medium
is like a clear acrylic this is a matte medium and a matte varnish usually they're the same thing
it allows you to thin out the paint without it getting a little clumpy a little bit runny if
you do that with water okay so a small bottle of matte or gloss or satin depending on what
kind of finish you like i like the matte get yourself one of these and it will really help
extend your paints for a long time so onto brushes and painting tools you don't need a lot of fancy
brushes in fact i would recommend if you're a beginner beginner only getting a very small set
and these are the absolute essentials get yourself a nice big flat brush so this is a one inch brush
and this brush is just made out of nylon it's really cheap you can get one at the dollar store
at the hardware store and you might be thinking oh my goodness it's so big that is such a big brush
but i'm telling you big brushes will save you a lot of time because if you're trying to paint
a surface with a tiny brush it looks overworked and it just takes forever so get yourself a nice
one inch flat brush and then my absolute favorite brush is a half inch flat brush so this brush i
think it's also like a dollar store brush dollars for brushes are fine just get yourself a flat half
inch brush they are very very versatile and really really easy to use and then a nice big round
brush so this brush is a size 12. you can get a size 8 to a size 12 8 is a little bit smaller
and don't get tiny tiny brushes because they don't hold enough paint and they're very
frustrating to use unless you're painting miniatures or something super super small
okay so you can see how big these brushes are compared to my hands
and sometimes if you like to paint small you can get yourself a set of these small brushes so you
can see you know a set like this might be about 15 or so it comes with some rounds some flats
in various sizes so these go from size six to a size one and then to mix colors unless
you're mixing very small quantities of colors you don't want to mix small colors with small brushes
mix your colors with your big brushes or with a palette knife so i suggest getting a palette
knife even if you're a beginner these things are great they save you a lot of time you can
use them to clean your palette you can use them to mix your paint you can use them to take paint
out or put paint back in and they're really really helpful you can also use these to paint
so get yourself a palette knife this one is one of my favorites it's just like a big
round one that is a little bit pointy another one that is a nice one to have is one like this it's
very similar except it's not round it has an edge here okay so you don't need many you just
need one palette knife to get yourself started they're about five to ten dollars very affordable
so those are all of the painting tools that you will need and now let's talk
about palettes so the nice thing about painting with acrylics is you can use any kind of palette
like you can use a piece of cardboard you can use you know the top of a salad container that you get
you know those plastic ones just just raid your recycling bin you can mix acrylics on anything uh
but a really really cheap and easy alternative is using a clipboard you can see here i have a just a
regular clipboard with a sheet of wax paper on it so you can get your wax paper at the dollar store
usually comes in a roll you just you know take off a sheet and clip it and now you have a nice
surface to mix your paints on and afterwards you can just fold it and put it in the garbage
okay so that's a really really nice alternative that is very affordable to use
probably one of my favorite mixing surfaces just because the cleanup is so easy i don't
really like those plastic trays that you can get those are better for watercolor
i really dislike washing those after using acrylic on them the next thing we'll talk about
are surfaces that you want to paint on there are two types of surfaces when it comes to acrylics
you can paint acrylic on top of anything you can paint on top of rock wood you know masonite
anything acrylic sticks to almost anything but if you want to paint on canvas or panel
for beginners i would suggest using canvas panel or canvas board so this is a board you can see
how thick it is these are excellent for beginners because they store really well they're very
durable and they you can pop them in a frame if you really like them you can paint over them
and they're very cheap right so you can get these for about a dollar to five dollars depending on
the size and the other kind is a stretched canvas so this is a brand new stretch canvas you can see
the plastic is still on it um but you can see that this type of canvas is a little bit more fragile
so if you're going to store these don't put them on anything sharp uh because it will go right
through the nice thing about these canvases are that you can hang them without a frame so that's
the benefit of painting on these ones but i would suggest one or the other to start you can also get
canvas paper if you prefer a paper surface and some other accessories i would get for acrylics
is get yourself some masking tape so masking tape is great especially when you want to paint
straight lines or you want to tape off a border or something like that so masking tape is great
and also a really nice thing to have when you're painting with acrylics is a piece of chalk
so you might be thinking i'm going to be drawing with pencil why would i use chalk um actually
pencil is a terrible tool for painting with acrylic because you have to erase it and all those
eraser bits get stuck so chalk is great because you can draw on top of your paints and if you
don't like it you can just wipe it off so chalk comes in handy if you are a beginner remember you
don't need to buy expensive paints you can buy the student grade stuff you can get your brushes at
the dollar store the most important thing is just to get started and once you've used up that first
set of student grade paints then you can reward yourself with some really nice brushes and
some higher quality paints so i hope that was really helpful i'll see you in the next video
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