Painting Supplies

ShawNshawN's recommended paint supplies for artists.
These are my recommendations to start painting with and what I use daily in my practice. The second image is the link to where to buy the supplies, but shop around as you may find better prices at another source.

Watercolor Paints

So watercolor is a great medium of very low cost, since most paint comes as hard squares, but you can use as well liquid watercolor once you get good.  Below are the recommended products to make a great painting. Below is the Kuretaki brand that is high quality watercolor sets from Japan once you get good.

Inktense Paints

Inktense is relatively new medium similar to watercolor, but using dry ink squares with water.  The depth of the colors can be very rich and intense as seen in this painting.  It offers another cheap painting alternative with water as the base and excellent for plein aire painting. Derwent makes a great set of this new paint.

Oil Paints

This is the classic paint medium since the 1400s when the time it was discovered.  You get a lot of variety in the thin to thick and richness of colors.  Painting can be done in many layers once mastered.  One of art collectors favorite medium to collect.  Its a great medium for slow, deliberate style painting as layers dry over 1 week time. A great brand is Windsor Newton brand shown here.

Acrylic Paints

Acrylic started in the 1920s, with the spin off of various plastic products, hence it is literally plastic type of glue with color.  Since it is glue, you can literally mix multiple materials in: gold, silver, glass, etc. for multiple uses.  It got popularized during the Pop Art movement of the 1960s.  You can paint very fast as layers can dry as fast as 15 minutes.  My brand I use is Golden at artist quality. I don't recommend student quality at all.

Paint Brushes

For each medium ideally you want your own brushes, but you can mix and match.  So I recommend getting a variety of brushes for each medium you use: watercolor, oil, acrylic, etc.  If cleaned carefully and cared for, you can keep brushes for years at a time.  Be specially vigilente with acrylic as you can easily ruin brushes from not cleaning fast enough.

Gesso

If you make your own canvases stretched on frames, like I do, gesso is a basic to canvas painting.  The layer of gesso between the canvas and the later painting, protects the canvas from rotting from color paint exposure.  Additionally, in acrylic painting you can use it as a paint color as well.

Canvas and other Surfaces

One way to reduce cost significantly on larger sized canvas is to make the canvas stretched yourself.  You can order canvas by the roll, which is the cheapest option.  For some smaller sizes, it is just easier to order online and fairly cheap as well.  Other surface options include wood panels, glass, etc.

DIY Framing

So one option you can use is to simply build the canvas stretcher bars yourself using simple lumber bought at the local hardware/lumber yard.  There is a bit of expertise to avoid warped frames, but it is a much cheaper option.  Another alternative, is the classic stretcher bars from the art store, but the client won't care either way in most cases. I prefer Home Depot, but Lowes works as well.