With summer on the horizon, there is a prospect of a holiday with empty time. Time in which you can relax, or get to work with paint and brushes. When you are at home you can have all your materials at your disposal, but when you travel with your painting supplies you have to make a choice. I often hear from students that they find this difficult. That is why in this blog I give a few tips on what you can take with you, even if you only have a small ‘suitcase’.
Make a plan first
Which medium do you want to use? Oil paint, acrylic paint, or watercolor paint? Or maybe oil pastel? This is a handy material for quickly making color studies. As far as paint goes, I find acrylic and watercolor the most practical for traveling. I always take a refillable drawing pen with me, from the brand Tradio. Nice to make quick black and white drawings along the way. It also makes waiting at stations much more fun.
Where do you buy your painting supplies?
There is a huge difference in the quality of painting supplies. It pays not to choose the cheapest. If you have a small budget, rather buy less, but of good quality. Especially when it comes to paint and brushes. Pigments are expensive, so cheap paint contains less pigment. As a result, the color strength is also less. More expensive brushes last longer and have better hair than the cheap versions.
With 5-10 colors you can make a lot of mixing colors
Whatever type of paint you use, with 5 colors you can get an incredible number of variations if you mix them together. This applies to paint, but also to colored pencils or crayons. Less is more and that beautiful painting box with 72 tubes is impressive, but it just confuses you. Paint brands often use different names for their colors. Ask in the store for a replacement color if you can’t find it from the list below. Take a look at the website of, for example, ‘Van Beek’ for orientation. There you can see color charts of the different brands of paint, eg Color chart Golden paint. In the menu on the left, you can select a color to see the variants. Also, check out the other brands.
Brushes and brushes
For a brush, soft and supple hair is used, you can find it here. Brushes are usually made from pig bristles. These are therefore stiffer. So if you work with oil paint, acrylic or gouache, the paint stroke remains visible. Again, cheap is usually expensive. With cheap brushes, the bristles quickly stand out or break off. 4 good brushes of different sizes are more useful than a cheap set of 12. Brushes for watercolor painting are soft. They are made of squirrel hair, sable hair, or a synthetic variant: filament. You really only need two brushes for watercolor: 1 thick or very thick and 1 thin. The thick can, if it is a real watercolor brush, absorbs a lot of water but also has a fine tip. And you use the small one for very fine details.