Whitehead Gallery - Learn stuff

Oil Paint:	My palette is based on two types of quality of paints. I've found that your best paints should cover all warm colors and blues/greens and the two brands I like are Winsor Newton and Grumbacher. For all of the earth tones, white, black, and canvas toning paint I use Winton or Amsterdam brands which are sold in large tubes for a fraction of the cost of top shelf paint. The cheaper paint is perfect for predictable mixing for underpaintings and canvas toning. For the landscapes I use this setup: Primary and Secondary Cadmium Red Deep (Winsor Newton) Bright Red (Winsor Newton) Cadmium Red (Sarkana) Cadmium Orange (Grumbacher) Indian Yellow (Winsor Newton) Azo Yellow (Sarkana) Naples Yellow (Winsor Newton) Sap Green (Winsor Newton) Ultramarine Blue (Winsor Newton) Burnt Sienna p016 (Grumbacher) Yellow Ochre (Grumbacher) Earths + Blues Raw Umber Burnt Umber Titanium White French Ultramarine Burnt Sienna Dioxazine Purple Cerulean Blue Rarely Used Phthalo Blue (Winton) Phthalo Green (Gamblin) Prussian Blue (Winton) Alizarin crimson (perm) Cobalt Green Dark (Sarkana)
Canvas:	This is something that I continually change and update. Personally I use cotton for 99% of my work because its very predictable, has good tooth, can be bought pre primed, and will last. Linen is also good, but can be a little costly and doesn't stretch as well as cotton. Polyflax (100% synthetic) is good too, but is a little too smooth for my current taste and styles. Most of my smaller canvases are mounted on thin MDF board which makes a great support; the glue that is used is similar to rabit hide glue so the painting could be removed and remounted at some point later. I use a Polish brand of gesso (Grunt Gesso - Renesans) on these to build up some characteristics to the surface. My larger canvases I use Frederix cotton (USA) or Caravaggio Canvas (Euro); both are excellent, but I have a slight preference on Caravaggio because the gesso has a better tooth and the texture is always very even.
Brushes and knives:	Most work I do is with a 1.5 inch house painter and a supply of flats and filberts. The meat and potatoes of my brushes are the Simply Simmons angle shaders/blenders; they are soft and synthetic, but wear quickly. Filberts I constantly experiment with and have not found one that I'm overly happy with; I tend to prefer synthetic brushes over natural hairs which may not help. I have two paint knives, but the only one I use is the standard issue Bob Ross knife; I do very little knife on canvas work so its mainly a mixing tool.
Additives and Varnish:	In general I don't add any type of dryer, oil, medium, or extender to my paint. Occasionally I'll use a poppy oil in my whites if I need to slow the drying. The one piece of advice I'll give here is to avoid using retouch varnish on ivory black.