Who It Suits

Painting is applying pigment mixed with a binder to a surface — canvas, board, or paper — usually with a brush. The binder is what makes the medium: water-based paints (acrylic, watercolour, gouache) clean up with water, while oil paint is thinned and cleaned with solvents or oils and dries slowly.

As a beginner you will spend most of your time on small studies — still life, a window view, colour charts — learning to see value (the lightness or darkness of a colour), to mix the colours you are looking at, and to decide when a picture is finished. The appeal is real: you can start with a modest kit, work at your own pace, and improve visibly within a few weeks of regular practice. The honest constraints are that painting is slow to master, each medium has its own rules and timing, and early work will look rough until your eye catches up with your hand.

Getting Started

Choose one medium first; switching media before the first one feels familiar is the most common way beginners stall.

  • Acrylic — water-based, dries fast, opaque, and correctable once dry. The most forgiving choice for a first medium.
  • Oil — slow drying, blends smoothly, and has a long history in fine art, but needs solvents for thinning and cleanup and a well-ventilated space (see Safety / Accessibility).
  • Watercolour — transparent, fast drying, and compact, but hard to correct; the white of the paper supplies the light areas. The watercolour page on this site covers it in full.
  • Gouache — opaque, matte, water-based paint. Thick watercolour is traditionally called bodycolour, and the French term gouache only caught on in the early 20th century.

Two terms cover most of the buying decision:

  • Student grade vs artist grade — student paints use more filler and less pure pigment, so they are cheaper but less vibrant. Student grade is fine for learning.
  • Opaque vs transparent — opaque paints (acrylic, gouache, most oils) can be painted over; transparent paints (watercolour, glazing oils) build colour in layers and cannot be covered.

The smallest sensible first project is a single small study of an object you own (see First Session). You can start with a six-colour set, two brushes, and a pad of paper or a few small boards.

Basic Gear

Essential:

  • A small paint set (6–12 colours is plenty; a limited palette keeps mixes harmonious).
  • Two or three brushes — one medium flat and one or two rounds cover most beginner work.
  • A suitable support: paper for watercolour and gouache, primed board or canvas for acrylic and oil.
  • A palette or plate, water jars (or solvent, for oil), and a cloth or kitchen roll.

Optional at first:

  • An easel — a tabletop easel is enough for small work.
  • Mixing medium (for oil) or a larger flat brush for wide areas.
  • A sketchbook for quick colour notes.

First Session

Paint a simple object in three passes, using a limited palette of three colours:

  1. Block in the main shape and the biggest light and dark areas (value) with loose, confident strokes.
  2. Adjust one or two colour relationships — where the shadow is warmer or cooler than the light, for example.
  3. Stop before the surface becomes muddy. Repeated mixing and brushing dulls every colour; a study that is 80% right is a better teacher than one that is overworked.

A few terms will do most of the work:

  • Value — the lightness or darkness of a colour, ignoring its hue. Getting value right matters more than getting hue right.
  • Limited palette — working with three to five colours so all your mixes harmonise.
  • Glazing — laying a thin transparent layer over a dry one to shift the colour underneath.
  • Plein air — painting outdoors, directly from the scene.

First Month

Make small studies rather than one precious painting. A useful sequence:

  1. Value study: paint the same object in one colour, placing only the light and dark areas.
  2. Limited palette: pick three colours and see how far you can get with mixes.
  3. Colour chart: mix a row of tints (mixed with white) and shades (mixed with a dark) from each tube colour, and note which pairs mix cleanly.
  4. One small finished study — a still life, a window view, or a copied master study — where you plan the big shapes before the first brushstroke.

Keep notes on which colours mix cleanly and which brushes feel useful.

Costs

Painting starts at low cost: a student-grade set, two brushes, and a pad of paper or a few small boards typically cost around £15–40 / US$20–50, though prices vary by region and change over time, so check current listings before budgeting. Oil painting costs a little more to set up (solvents, medium, primed canvas), and costs rise with larger surfaces, specialist pigments, frames, and studio space. Upgrade paper or board before you upgrade paint.

Space Needed

A table, tray, or easel corner is enough for small paintings. Protect the work surface, plan where wet pieces will dry (flat and dust-free), and keep supplies together so setup does not become a barrier. Oil work needs a well-ventilated spot and a place to store solvents safely away from heat.

Solo or Social

Painting is usually solitary, but structure and feedback accelerate learning: life-drawing sessions, community-college courses, plein-air groups, open studios, and online critique circles all work. Local art societies run exhibitions and open competitions, and the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in London has shown open-entry work since 1769 — a useful benchmark for what exhibition-level painting looks like.

Common Mistakes

  • Buying too many colours at once.
  • Switching media before the first one feels familiar.
  • Working too large too early.
  • Overmixing paint until every colour turns dull.
  • Skipping value studies and going straight to full colour.
  • Treating every study as a final piece.

Safety / Accessibility

Water-based media (acrylic, watercolour, gouache) are low mess and low odour — no solvents. Some traditional pigments, however, contain heavy metals (cadmium in bright reds and yellows, cobalt in blues, lead in traditional whites), so wash your hands after painting, do not eat or drink at the painting spot, and keep paints out of reach of young children.

Oil painting adds real hazards. Solvents such as turpentine and mineral spirits are flammable and give off fumes; NIOSH lists exposure limits and flammability data for these chemicals, and “odorless” mineral spirits still release volatile compounds. Work in a ventilated space, keep solvents away from heat and ignition sources, store them in their original labelled containers, and wash your hands before eating. Wring out used linseed-oil rags and lay them flat to dry, or dispose of them in a sealed metal container, because oil-soaked rags can heat up and ignite on their own.

For accessibility: seated setups, tabletop easels, larger brush handles, and water-based media make painting easier to sustain, and the small kit and self-set pace adapt well to one-handed work and limited mobility.

Where It Can Go

Casually, painting leads toward illustration, portraiture, murals, botanical or landscape studies, teaching, or selling original pieces and prints. The structured route runs through local art societies and their open competitions, life-drawing and masterclasses, and — at the advanced end — exhibition work such as the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. Oil, acrylic, gouache, and watercolour each have their own communities and specialist techniques to grow into.

References

Last reviewed: 17 August 2026.

Background:

  • V&A: What is watercolour? for the basic composition of paint (pigment, binder, water), the traditional term ‘bodycolour’ for thick opaque watercolour and the later adoption of ‘gouache’, and the history of transparent watercolour as an 18th-century art form.

Safety:

  • NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards (US CDC) for hazard data on common oil-painting solvents — the guide lists entries for toluene, turpentine, and mineral spirits with exposure limits, flammability classes, and symptoms of exposure.

Drawing, watercolour, printmaking, digital illustration, photography, journaling, and urban sketching all build the same habits of looking and composing.