Learning to See

Inspiration and practical advice for aspiring realist artists

More Mastering the Magic Materials List

Munsell Value Scale

This is a must. Unless you have a Munsell value scale as part of a Munsell book, you absolutely should get hold of the Paul Centore Munsell Value scale from Ebay. This will allow you to absolutely nail the values.

At a minimum, you must have this to have a chance of getting the best from the course – all the values will be controlled with it. It’s only $10 so won’t break the bank, and will be very useful to you even after the workshop is over.

Brushes

To a large  extent, which brushes you use is a personal choice and is not too critical.  But here are a few guidelines and recommendations.

Try to make sure you have a few good sized brushes,  about a half inch at least. Whilst we’ll be working fairly small – mostly 10 x 8 inches – larger brushes will keep you from fiddling too much and help you to paint more expressively.

You can use synthetics or hog bristle, or – as I do – some of both. Synthetics are good for  careful edge control and blending.

More springy, natural bristle hogs are good for texture and a brushy finish, we’ll be painting mostyl with these. 

I’d suggest the following, but bear in mind this is just a guide. If you have brushes you particularly like, by all means use them:

  • 2 x hog flat or filbert, large-ish – size 6 to 8 or 5/8 inch ferrule
  • 4 x smaller hog filberts, size 2 or 1/4 inch ferrule
  • 2 x half inch synthetic flats for softening – the Winsor and Newton Scepter Golds linked below are great for this.
  • A large, soft, watercolour or acrylic wash brush – something like this – for softening
  • I would also make sure you have a couple of small synthetic rounds for details, size 1 and 2.

Advice on Synthetics

Any soft, synthetic flats will do, but here are some brands to consider:

Winsor and Newton Sceptre Gold – whilst they unfortunately have short handles, (although I have heard you can get them with long handles now…) the ‘long stroke’, series 606, are very good brushes, both for painting and softening.

NOTE: These are not completely synthetic, I think they are a sable and synthetic mix, so if you don’t want to use natural hair in your brushes, you won’t want these. Any soft, flat synthetic will do in their stead.

https://www.dickblick.com/items/05843-1004

For the larger soft synthetic flat for dry brush blending and softening, brand isn’t important, it just needs to be very soft. The best ones I’ve found are watercolour wash brushes.

Advice on Bristle

These are fantastic when you want to add some dynamism and texture. I’ll be using mostly hog bristle brushes in this workshop. Brand isn’t critical but do get quality if you can. I like Cornelissens best, but they may take a while to ship to the US. In those brushes, if you can manage it, I’d get a couple size 1, a couple of size 3 and a couple size 5 or 6 at the minimum. I tend to change brushes when I change colour in order to keep the colours clean, so the more brushes the better!

Winsor and Newton are also pretty good.

Synthetic rounds

The Sceptre Gold (https://www.dickblick.com/items/05003-1000/) will be good here, I think probably size 1 and 2 will be useful. They’re also useful to use dry for very fine detailed edge softening.

Other Tools for Paint Application and Texture

These are all optional, but if you have a few of them you’ll be able to experiment more with the texture of your paint surface. Texture is life!

Mask

IMPORTANT Wear one of these if you’re going to sand the surface of your painting, especially if you’re using lead white. Get at least an N95. 

Tube Paints

Whilst I will try to give you options for reaching the colours we’ll be mixing, it will be easier for you if you have at least some of the same tube paints as me. This list will cover most eventualities in the course and also give you a good foundation that covers a wide range of colours without having too many tubes.

If you want to use your own preferred tube paints, that’s fine of course. But please understand that you may find it more difficult to get some of the mixes, and some high chroma ones may not be possible at all, depending on what you have available.

All colours are Michael Harding unless otherwise noted

  • White – I’d recommend a lead white, buit titanium will work too if you don’t want to use lead-based paint. My favourite is Lead White (#1 or #2) from Rublev. I hear RGH is good too, but I haven’t used it.
  • Cadmium yellow (Cadmium Yellow pale if Winsor and Newton)
  • Bright Yellow Lake (any arylide yellow like Hansa Yellow will also do well here) or Cadmium Lemon Yellow
  • Quinacridone rose
  • Green gold (Williamsburg is cheaper than Michael Harding and much the same)
  • Transparent red oxide
  • Ultramarine Blue
  • Raw umber
  • Ivory Black

Surface

For this course we’ll be working on Ampersand Gessobord Panels. You can use the cradled or the uncradled. We’ll be producing three paintings, so three 9 x 12 inch panels should cover it.

You are of course welcome to work with different sizes as long as your fine with handling the different aspect ratio yourself. All the reference pohotos will be designed to be painted at 9 x 12 inches. I’ll supply uncropped versions too, so you can crop them how you like if you don’t want to work that size. Please bear in mind that I may not be able to help with any problems you come across if you’re working with a different size and aspect ratio (although I will try, of course).

Ampersand Panels:

https://www.dickblick.com/items/ampersand-gessobord-9-x-12-18-flat

Cradled version:

https://www.dickblick.com/items/ampersand-gessobord-9-x-12-2-cradled

Medium

Cold Pressed or Refined Linseed Oil and a solvent like Gamsol or turps.

You can drop the solvent entirely and just use oil, or use Rublev Oleogel. Olegel is much stiffer, but can be applied in thin a very layer.

Set Up

This is really personal and depends on what kind of easel you have. I like to work standing up at an upright easel but since we’ll be painting from a photo, it’s up to you.

You’ll need a tablet or computer with a decent screen, and to have that next to your easel.

It works best if you can have the reference photo open on one device, say a tablet, and have the live stream of the session on something else, a desktop or laptop.

If you’re not working in daylight (preferably you will) you will need a good light on your easel, CRI 96 or better and a temperature of around 5600k. If you want a recommendation, these are great. One either side of your easel will give a good, even light:

[https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Pieces-Bi-color-Video-Light/dp/B06XW3B81V/ref=sr_1_1?th=1]

I use them with softboxes over the lights.

Softboxes for the above lights

Other stuff

  • Palette knife
  • Make up sponge for oiling out
  • A decent palette of course. Glass is best, especially with a sheet of mid-value neutral grey paper underneath. I use a shelf from an old fridge!
  • Kitchen roll or paper towels
  • Fine sand paper. I use 400 – 800 grit wet and dry to roughen the paint surface a little before oiling out between layers. It helps the thin oil layer to take and adhere. You don’t have to do this, but you may find your oil beading up a little on the surface if you don’t, and you’ll need to work it in for a bit longer to get it to adhere properly.