Adult Classes and Workshops

DRAWING AND PAINTING MATERIALS
You get to choose what materials you would like to use for this class. I will list some possibilities, with pros and cons. Please don’t feel obligated to get everything! You can choose a material to start with, and then add as you are ready.

Things everyone will need:
A pencil, eraser, and some kind of sketchbook. I like 9”x 12”, but you might like bigger or smaller.
Sunscreen and/or a big hat, comfortable shoes, and plenty of water!

POSSIBLE DRAWING MATERIALS
Color Pencils
Pros: You get a huge, beautiful range of colors, with maximum control of color and placement.
Cons: It’s very labor intensive to build up dense colors, and you work in layers, so it’s not very spontaneous.
Recommended brand: Prismacolor. A set of 24 is nice, but you can do a lot with 12.
Paper: 9” x 12” is probably a good size for this material, and any dry media paper is fine.

Oil Pastels
Pros: You can create vibrant color really quickly, with a lot of freedom to smudge and blend.
Cons: Oil pastels are hard to control and to be precise with.
Recommended brands: Caran D’Ache and Sennelier are beautiful but expensive. Pentel and Sakura are good quality and reasonably priced. Sargent is lower quality. A set of 24 is nice, but you can do a lot with 12 or 16.
Paper: You can easily make 12” x 18” drawings with oil pastels, and they work for smaller sizes, too. Any dry media paper is fine.

Chalk Pastels
Pros: You can create vibrant color really quickly with chalk pastels, too, and you have a lot of freedom to mix colors by blending or layering.
Cons: Chalk pastels are dusty!!! I only use them outdoors. You will also need to use fixative on your drawings to preserve them.
Recommended brands: Sennelier is beautiful but expensive. NuPastel and Rembrandt are good quality and reasonably priced. Sargent is lower quality. A set of 24 is nice, but you can do a lot with 12. Bigger sets are very luxurious!
Paper: Be sure to use pastel or charcoal paper with chalk pastels. You can make really big drawings with it if you want to, like 22” x 30” ! They are great for smaller drawings, too.

Other things you will need for drawing:
a drawing board
clips to hold your paper on
hand wipes are nice but not necessary

ABOUT PAINTING MATERIALS:
General pros: Paint has an enormous, flexible range for creating color and texture, and detail and large color fields.
General cons: Learning to control paint takes some practice, and painting outside might be a lot to juggle if you have never painted before. But if you are up for an adventure, it’s fine to dive in!!

POSSIBLE PAINTING MATERIALS:
Acrylic paint:
Pros: This opacity of this paint makes it very forgiving, and it’s great for building up texture. It also dries really quickly, for painting over and for transport. You can thin it down and clean your brushes with water.
Cons: The short drying window can be a disadvantage for reworking and blending. Acrylic paint also dries slightly darker than it looks when it’s wet. It’s a newer material in the history of art, and some people think it looks like plastic. Others love it! It does not come out of clothing.

Oil paint:
Pros: Oil paint has all the pros of acrylic paint, but a longer working window. Oil paint has a long and venerable tradition in Western art.
Cons: Oil paint takes a long time to dry, so you have to be up for transporting wet paintings. Traditionally, people use solvents with it, but this can avoided. However, you will need to use oil, not water, for thinning oil paint down, so it can get messy. Like acrylic paint, it stains clothing.

You can’t mix acrylic paint and oil in the same painting. 

For either kind of paint:
Colors you will need:
White:
Titanium white
(If you already have zinc white you can use that too, but it’s not as powerful)

Prismatics:
Cadmium yellow light (leans towards orange, but close to the middle)
(Cadmium yellow lemon: leans towards green)

Cadmium red light or cad red medium or naphthol red or another orangish red 
Permanent rose or permanent alizarin crimson or another maroonish red 

Cerulean blue, phthalo blue , or manganese blue (a greenish blue)
Ultramarine blue (a purple-ish blue)

Earth colors: 
These are nice to have and less expensive than the prismatics, but not necessary, especially at the beginning: 
Yellow ochre
Venetian red, Indian red, terra rossa or any other earth red 
Burnt sienna
Burnt umber
Ivory  black

Medium, if you are using oil paint:
I recommend against solvents, since they are so toxic. Instead, use:
Safflower oil or walnut oil
A glass jar or metal jar with a lid to keep it in
At home, you can use Palmolive to wash your brushes.

Brushes:
I like Princeton Art and Brush Company synthetic bristle brushes, because they are easy to clean, and a reasonable price and quality. Utrecht brushes are cheaper, but don’t hold up as well. You can also look at the other possibilities. To start, it is good to have:
Filberts or flats in small, medium, and large. #4 is my favorite size.
Medium bright
Large bright if possible
Small round brush
Don’t worry about having the perfect thing---- make your best guess, and you’ll keep adding to your brush collection over time.

Other things you will need:
Palette: I think  a 12” x 18” disposable palette paper is easiest, but you can also use a 
wooden or glass one.
Palette knife: there are many different kinds. See what feels comfortable to you.
Absorbent paper towel or rags.
A plastic bag for throwing them away.
Latex gloves if you are concerned about chemicals in the paint--- some people are and some people are not.
Something to carry everything in: you can use a rolling cart, backpack, or paint box.

Painting surfaces:
You can use canvas paper, a canvas pad, canvas board, or stretched canvas, depending on your budget, how durable you want the finished work to be, and whether you like painting on something with a “bounce” or on something solid. For now, a few smallish surfaces would be good to have, like 8” x 10”, 9” x 12”, or 11” x 14”

IF YOU WANT TO USE WATERCOLOR PAINT:
Pros: Watercolor’s transparency has a beautiful, sparkling quality, and it’s less messy to work with than oil and acrylic paint. 
Cons: The transparency that is beautiful also makes watercolor unforgiving--- it’s hard to change what you’ve already put down. You will need to either be really strategic or totally open to the happy accident.
Recommended brands: Winsor Newton and Daler-Roney are a good value.
Other notes: You can get pan sets, or use tubes and a watercolor palette. Be sure to get real watercolor paper and brushes.