Expressions in Paint with Claire Desjardins

Acrylic Paints

I like Golden and Liquitex brands, but other professional grade brands will work, too. If sharing paints, students can also use plates as their palettes, which they can load up with paints (need plastic spoons). I recommend having Saran Wrap around, to cover the paint palettes when not in use.

Basic colours (4 oz pots are nice, but bigger is better, always):

 Titanium White (large!)

 Cadmium Red Light

 Cadmium Yellow Medium

 Phthalo Blue

 Mars Black 

Phthalo Green

Optional Colours (again, 4 oz pots are nice, but bigger is better, always):

I like to have lots of colour options as I work, and use many of them, often pre-mixed, and that I have made myself. Hues are ok too!

 Pyrrole Orange

 Cadmium orange

 Lime green

 Quinacridone Magenta

 Pinks of all sorts

 Yellow ochre

 Purples / mauves

I also like to work with acrylic polymer mediums. My brand of choice is Liquitex, and I like their pouring medium, matte medium, gloss medium, etc. Can be one or all of the above, as well as any other mediums they make. I like Liquitex because the consistency is just right, but can work with other brands too.

Brushes

I like a variety of brush sizes, from 4 to 20. I also use chip brushes, available from the Dollar Store. Sometimes you can get a pack of 8 or 12 for just a couple of bucks, all different sizes.

Surface Materials for 3 days (suggested)

Substrates

There are different kinds of substrates that students can use. Each participant should plan on 2-3 large pieces of substrate material per day. Size should be approximately 36” x 36” (or 30”x40”) or larger. You can decide between canvas; gallery wrapped, canvas sheets, rolls, etc. or primed water color paper (with gesso—see below). If using rolled canvas, you will also need a large enough board to clip them to, as well as the clips.

Canvas

 Canvas sheets come in pads, which are ready to use. You can use canvas panels, which are cheap and ready to use. Pre-stretched canvases are convenient, and already primed with the necessary undercoating for painting, however they are more expensive in the long run than stretching your own canvases, and take up more space. Linen or cotton fabric canvas is used to stretch your own canvases. All these types of canvas are sold at art supply stores. Canvas fabric comes in linen and cotton; linen has a smoother feel and is nicer to use, but is more expensive. Both cotton and linen come unprimed and primed; primed means that the necessary undercoating of gesso has already been applied, and the canvas can be stretched over wooden stretcher bars, and painted on right away. Unprimed means that you need to put two coats of gesso on the canvas (after it has been stretched over the wooden stretchers). Canvas fabric comes in three weights - the middle weight usually works well for most users; usually buying it by the yard saves a little money if you plan to paint more than one painting.

Primed paper: Roll of Strathmore 400 series cold press140lb paper, 36” or 40” wide primed with gesso. Paper can be ordered from Dick Blick, and cut it with an X-Acto knife, after it’s primed.

Board & clips: if using paper or unstretched canvas, you will also need a large board and clips. Make sure that the board is at least as big as your substrate.

Other materials

Collage pieces—maps, old magazines, wrapping paper, coloured tissue paper, scraps that would otherwise go into the recycle bin, string bits, other textured items found objects), plastic mesh, etc. All that stuff is great to work with!

Latex gloves—It can be difficult to get acrylic polymer medium off of one's hands (mostly used for collage, but also for pouring paints), after using it, so it can be handy to have latex gloves. **We will offer these**

Plastic containers—I usually work with loads of old yoghurt containers, as I use one for the dirty blue water, one for the dirty red water, one for the dirty purple water, and so on. I also use smaller plastic containers (with lids) to store my mixed paints in. Please start collecting, now!

Rags and/or paper towel roll to wipe brushes on and clean up.

Spray bottle filled with water

Scissors— for collage work

X-Acto knives— in case anyone wants to cut out magazine images, for collage.

Palette

Plastic wrap (to stretch over paint palette at night).

Notebook & pen for note taking.

Miscellaneous materials: anything you typically use like palette knives, ect.