Paper
quality watercolour paper. Start with cold pressed.
Preferred brands:
Brushes
one or two good quality sable, synthetic or sable/synthetic combination brushes.
The following sizes are recommended:
Paint Colours
good quality transparent tube or cake watercolours. Recommended colours:
Cotman watercolour brand is a reasonable quality paint at a lower price. Better quality paints cost more because they have more pigment. Winsor & Newton professional watercolours are a reliable quality brand. Schmincke watercolours are a personal favorite.
Other Items
Materials for Oil Painting
Recommended Paint Colours
Oil Paint Brushes
At least 6 brushes are needed as a start (but more brushes, if you have them, is helpful):
· 2 large (sizes 16-18)
· 2 medium (sizes 12-8)
· 2 medium-small (sizes 6-4)
Oil paint brushes are specifically designed to work with oil paint. They come in three main styles: flat, filbert and round. I prefer and only use filbert.
There are many brands to choose from. Sizes vary with brand. The sizes I have suggested are based on the Raphael brand boar hair series. The Escoda Classico (hog hair) brand is sized smaller and in this brand size 6 would be very small. Try these or other oil brush brands to find the ones you prefer.
Canvas
· Canson Canva Paper Pad (min. size 12” x 16”)
Solvents/Mediums
· metal holder for solvents/mediums
· odorless solvent: Sansodor (Windsor & Newton) or Gamsol (Gamblin)
· medium: Artists’ Painting Medium (Windsor & Newton)—optional
Other items
· Palette (paper palettes are great, min. size 12” x 16”)
· Palette knife
· Cotton rags or mechanics’ (blue) paper towel
· Dish soap or brush cleaning soap for brushes
· Rubber glove for cleaning brushes
Hard Pastel
Hard pastels have a consistency comparable to conté although they are also dryer in feel. Final works will feel more like a drawing. They are excellent for layering and can produce a very luminous effect because more of the underlying paper can be left exposed.
Hard pastels come in stick or pencil formats.
Of the hard pastels I have used and enjoy the following brands:
· NuPastel
· coloured conté
· Stabilo Carbothello which is in a pencil format.
*The Stabilo I have used a lot, and I love them. Make sure you buy an excellent pencil sharpener—look for a German blade.
Due to their easy layering capacities, one can get by with fewer hard pastels than soft ones. For someone experimenting with pastel and/or colour for the first time, a 12- or 24-piece set of hard pastel would do the trick.
Soft Pastel
Soft pastels are beloved for their rich tactile nature and painterly effects. It can feel very close to painting with one’s hands.
Soft pastels are generally sold as sticks and come in different sizes. A starter set is a good place to begin, but if you enjoy pastel, you will love having more.
I have used many different brands of soft pastel. Some of my favorites are:
· Schmincke
· Sennelier
· Great American
· Unison
Others have recommended Holbein Artist Soft Pastel as a good, slightly economical brand.
Cheaper brands are cheaper in every sense. They will be very dusty and will limit how much layering is possible. If cost is a concern, consider going with hard pastels.
Paper
Pastels require a paper with a “tooth” to hold the fine particles of the medium. Usually, papers will be labelled as pastel paper.
Hard pastels do not require as toothy a paper. They will take very easily to common brands or series of papers like:
· Mi-Teintes (Canson)
· Ingres (Canson, Fabriano, Hahnemühle)
· Old Master (Saint-Armand)
Soft pastels can also be used on these papers, but it will be necessary to use a fixative on the drawing in between the layers of pastel.
Other papers that hold soft pastel well are printmaking papers:
· Somerset
· Rives
Specialty Papers
There are many specialty paper products for pastel with a surface treatment that augments the tooth of the paper. Recently I have used Art Spectrum Colourfix and I enjoyed it. It is a finely textured surface that holds the pastel but also lets you move it around easily.
There are more highly textured paper products on the market. These I don’t enjoy. They eat the pastels and I can’t move the material as I like to; however, they do deliver a very opaque painterly effect if that is what one is after.
Paper Colour
Drawing and pastel papers are available in a range of colours which are wonderful to use. If you are new to pastel, consider starting with more neutral colours: grey, blue-grey, warm-grey.
Other Materials
· Workable Fixative: SpectraFix Degas Fixative. Non-toxic so can be applied indoors. (Other fixatives are toxic and will need to be applied outdoors and left to off-gas for 30 mins.)
· Kneadable eraser
· Willow charcoal
· Stubs (newspaper rolled into pencil shapes)
· Clips for holding paper to the board
· Cheap paper (newsprint, manila for any preparatory work)
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