Savannah Hayes writes:  Hi Lisa,

I know that in some of your videos you’ve said that it’s important to have good materials when completing a project (acrylic, oil, etc). How can I tell if I am working with a bad product or if my application of that product is bad. For example, I got an acrylic starter set from Artist’s loft for my birthday two months ago, and in those two months I haven’t seen any improvement. I don’t know if it’s because that product is bad or if my application of it is bad, or if it’s just the fact that the only brushes it came with were three flat brushes, a chiseled brush and two small round brushes  which probably aren’t able to get all the effects I want. I thought that if I buy new brushes and haven’t mastered the ones I already have it would be a waste because then I will just keep thinking that I need better materials, but I’m sure that if all you had were those brushes, you could make a masterpiece.I am at the point of giving up on acrylics and moving on to oils because they look so much easier. Acrylics just dry too fast, I can’t seem to layer them right, and well… sometimes I feel like I’ll never get to where I’d like to be.  Thank you for all your helpful advice and for spending hours and hours on helping aspiring new artists. Your art inspires me to keep trying and trying even when my art looks like a bomb went off on the canvas. XD

Yes, the quality of your supplies can definitely be a factor. I don’t like any of the generic acrylic paints I’ve tried. The funny thing is, my preferred acrylic paint (Liquitex Basics) is not an expensive paint at all! You have a couple of options on keeping the cost down. Use a 40% coupon and get one of the larger tubes every time you go to the art supply store. You can start with just black and white to get a feel for the paint, then try adding blue and slowly other colors using that 40% coupon each time you go. The next would be to get one of the sets of small tubes that has a LOT of colors and use your coupon on the whole set.

With some of the cheaper acrylics, they will sometimes lift off the canvas when you add additional layers and cause problems there. Sometimes they have more gloss than I like so they make it impossible to get the charcoal pencil to stick to when drawing my subject over my backgrounds. In these cases, the brand can make it harder to learn with.

As for the brushes, 3 are not a lot but it’s a start. I would add some round taklon brisled brushes and various filberts then get a makeup blush brush to use as your mop brush to start with. You don’t have to get super expensive brushes. Hobby Lobby’s generic brushes (which I actually do like even though they are generics) go on sale for half price about once a month.

All that said, acrylics take a long time to really learn how to layer, how long to let dry between layers, how to blend wet into wet. They are probably one of the more difficult mediums to learn to do really well. I don’t mean learning the violin level of difficulty, but they are a real challenge. It took YEARS to get to the point where I was comfortable working in them and knew I could get them to do what I wanted them to. Two months really is not much, so I wouldn’t expect you to have improved leaps and bounds yet. The best thing you can do is keep painting with what you have until you can get better supplies. You are still learning with what you have, don’t think that because you don’t have the best that you shouldn’t bother. When I started I used to paint on old pieces of compressed cardboard that came on the underside of the printer paper came on at the pet store I worked at. I couldn’t afford canvases. Now those were not archival, I could never sell something like that and I’m not going to learn as much on those as I can on a canvas…but it didn’t stop me. I still got a feel for the paint and for blending. Not the best, but it was what I had available at the time!

The best thing you can do is keep painting with what you have until you can get better supplies. You are still learning with what you have, don’t think that because you don’t have the best that you shouldn’t bother. When I started I used to paint on old pieces of compressed cardboard that came on the underside of the printer paper came on at the pet store I worked at. I couldn’t afford canvases. Now those were not archival, I could never sell something like that and I’m not going to learn as much on those as I can on a canvas…but it didn’t stop me. I still got a feel for the paint and for blending. Not the best, but it was what I had available at the time! I used to paint band logos (anyone remember 311?) for my friends on those boards. Again, not masterpieces but I had fun and it was helping me to learn control over the brushes I had and blending.