good because those are the only ones I know thing about
With acrylics, I would recommend starting with something simple, like those odd bottles you find at every craft store.
Pick up some cheap brushes. Whether you pick them out individually from the fancy brush wall, buy a bulk set for 6 bucks, or skip it all and buy clearance makeup brushes (which actually work surprisingly well), it’s likely good enough. Just make sure you have at least one large boi, one smol detail boi, one round boi, a filbert, and one stiff boi of any size. I’d highly recommend getting a fan brush, liner, angled boi, and a small mop or blender as well, but you don’t necessarily need them.
Oh, and a plastic palette knife. Those are good.
Then, for canvases, you can either grab a pack of canvas/watercolor/mixed media paper (any of those would work) from your local craft store, or if you want individual canvases, Dollar Tree has some surprisingly nice but small little boards that you can pick up for like 50 cents, love those things
And then just watch many tutorial until you get the hang of it!
With watercolor, there are multiple types you can look for:
There’s watercolor pans, which are basically little blocks of paint that you add water to
There’s tubes, which are just tubes of the wet paint
There’s liquid watercolors/watercolor inks, which come in usually glass ink bottles that you can drip into your palette
And there’s watercolor pencils, which are pencils, but with watercolor
They each have their own unique benefits, but the results in art look basically the same so it’s really just a preference thing
I personally like the tubes, they’re a bit expensive but you can make both pan and liquid types out of them, plus you can use them straight out of the bottle for more opaque lines
I haven’t used many different brands or types so it’s probably best for you to do your own research on what would be best for you, although I do think the Reeves and Windsor & Newton Cotman sets are both pretty fantastic.
For brushes, you really don’t need a lot
Just get a large soff boi, a smol soff boi, and maybe a medium or liner if you’re feeling extra fancy
You are gonna want some paper towels, salt, cling wrap, an eyedropper, a magic eraser, an old toothbrush, and maybe a sponge, for effects n stuff
I’d recommend white acrylic paint or gouache as well
For watercolor paper, I like the Canson XL stuff, simply because it’s available nearly everywhere I’ve been, and doesn’t cost me a bloody fortune
There are some canvases you can get but they’re pricey so you should probably avoid those at first
And also watch tutorials
Watercolor is very difficult to learn, at least for me, so it’s best to do as much research as possible and learn your techniques before jumping in. in other words don’t be an Ella
(Also just a life hack: sketch your painting idea on a separate piece of paper from the one you’ll be painting on, then trace it lightly onto your paper with watercolor pencils (if they’re within your budget). This will make it so the sketch is invisible in the finished project without having to erase the whole thing, making your life so much easier. Plus then you still have the sketch in case things go disastrously wrong with the paint, which has happened to me more times than I’d like to admit)
Hope this helps-! <3
