Two Strategies for Buying Paint

Two Strategies for Buying Paint

Buying paint is complicated. Each brand has hundreds of items, which make us a hard time to figure out what we need. Some of them have romantic names, which makes the choice even more difficult. But in reality, it's not as scary as it seems, and now we will bring all this into order together.

All paints are made from pigments. There are not so many basic pigments, and there is quite a limited set of mono-pigment paints that are produced from them, while the rest are mixtures of basic pigments in different proportions. In general, if you think logically and you know which pigments are used in multi-pigment paints, it is quite possible to mix them yourself. Of course, there are many advantages to buying ready-made paints. It is considered that ready-made mixtures are of a much higher quality. Also, if you mix them yourself, the shade may differ slightly, it takes more time and you need to be able to calculate the amount of the mixture.

But there are also advantages: you don't have to spend a lot of money on buying all the tubes in the world. Moreover, if you mix several mono-pigment paints, there will be much less mess on your palette, than if you mix several multi-pigment paints. Because when there are too many pigments are mixed, we are not able to keep track of what is on the palette, and which pigments from one paint neutralize which from another.

So what we should do? Which art store to run and what to buy?

In general, artists are divided into two schools:

The first says: choose "pure colors", that is, mono-pigment paints and you will never have a mess on your palette. (We will talk about which paints to choose and how to mix them in the next articles).

The second approach says that you shouldn't waste time mixing paints, so choose 2-3 ready-made multi-pigment paints that mix well (that is create harmonies, but more on that later) and use them in different proportions. This method is often chosen by artists who draw with a limited palette.

There are experienced artists who know exactly what mixtures they will need and, knowing how these paints mix with others, buy exactly what they need for a specific painting in advance.

But if you are not such an experienced specialist and are just starting to learn all the tricks of this medium, choose one of these two approaches. Although I myself prefer the first one, but we will talk about that another time (stay tuned, I will explain it in upcoming articles).

Summary

Think what strategy you like best and buy the paints that are suitable for that strategy, don't try to buy everything at one time.