Creative Cogitation

Thank  you Mr. Singer.

Who was Mr.  Singer?  He was an art class teacher I had in high school.  I am not even sure if they have art classes any­more in high school, but if not, it is a shame.  As a math prodigy, I can say with absolute cer­ti­tude there is more to learn­ing than readin, ritin, and rithmatic.

In grade school, I really enjoyed my art classes because the teacher would out­line a project and then I could run with it.  My art teach­ers seemed to love my cre­ative depar­tures.  It was the one area of edu­ca­tion where rote repro­duc­tion was not required.

In my hum­ble opin­ion cre­ativ­ity is a skill that is required to achieve the high­est form of human endeavor no mat­ter what the field, but mod­ern edu­ca­tion with its empha­sis on rote repro­duc­tion can very eas­ily crush it.  Fur­ther­more, cre­ativ­ity can atro­phy if it is not nur­tured.  There­fore, I believe cre­ative elec­tives are very impor­tant.  Return­ing to Mr.  Singer…

When I took my first high school art class, it was a bit of a shock.  Whereas grade school art was all tem­pera paint, crayons, glit­ter, con­struc­tion paper, bal­loons and paper-mache, high school art was seri­ous.  Mr. Singer had stan­dards. He taught var­i­ous tech­niques and although sub­ject mat­ter could vary, you had to use the method he was teach­ing at the moment.  He not only forced me to stretch, but to aim for per­fec­tion of tech­nique as well.  To Mr.  Singer noth­ing was per­fect.  He could find some­thing wrong with any­thing, but his crit­i­cisms were just and I learned a lot from him.

How­ever, before we drew our first line, Mr.  Singer made us all go out and pur­chase real art sup­plies.  I was not a rich kid and I was used to using reams of newsprint and what­ever “art sup­plies” the local dis­count depart­ment store car­ried. Buy­ing real art sup­plies was trau­matic; real art sup­plies are expen­sive.  I quickly got over that once I real­ized the joys of a range of shad­ings beyond the stan­dard no 2 pen­cil, and paper you could not erase a hole through no mat­ter how hard you tried. I car­ried Mr. Singer’s les­son of buy­ing qual­ity art sup­plies thereafter.

Les­son 1 Buy qual­ity art sup­plies: I am an advo­cate of using pro­fes­sional mate­ri­als when­ever you create.

Some of the paint­ing sup­plies artist Jake Beck­man cur­rent uses: Posca paint pens, Golden & Liq­ui­tex acrylic paints, medi­ums, var­nishes. I stopped right in the mid­dle of typ­ing this blog & took a pic­ture of some my actual supplies-Jake

Sev­eral years ago, I was trav­el­ing to a dif­fer­ent state and I did not take any art sup­plies with me.  The only store around was a dis­count depart­ment store, which shall remain nameless. When the muse smacked my upside the head with inspi­ra­tion, I wan­dered in to pick up some art sup­plies there.  Sure, the dis­count depart­ment store sold acrylic paint, brushes and some can­vases but as soon as I started to use them, I missed my pro­fes­sional sup­plies in a big way.

This store sold brand of acrylic paint that I could only char­i­ta­bly call stu­dent grade. The man­u­fac­turer extended the pig­ment so far, that you could not thin it down any more.  In order to achieve any depth of color and opac­ity, I had to use the paint as it came out of the tube.  I am used to pro­fes­sional col­ors that I can thin or mix with other medi­ums.  I use a vari­ety of painterly tech­niques that require thin­ning or mix­ing with media, there­fore I found the dis­count depart­ment store paint very lim­it­ing and ulti­mately unsat­is­fy­ing.  My muse sulked through the entire vacation.

Les­son 2 Bring Some Qual­ity Sup­plies With You: If you are trav­el­ing, you are not sure you can get qual­ity art sup­plies at your des­ti­na­tion, and you are sure the muse is going to smack you upside the head some­time while you are there, take a sub­set of qual­ity art sup­plies with you.  The next year, I picked up a starter set plus a cou­ple of other col­ors with which to travel.

I advise even the hobby artist to get pro­fes­sional grade paint; there are tech­niques that are only avail­able to you if you use them, glazes and washes for exam­ple.  Pro­fes­sional sup­plies are more expen­sive that the ones you can pick up at a dis­count depart­ment store, but they are worth it.  Although it is pos­si­ble to spend an insane amount of money on art sup­plies (I know of one artist who got two tubes of paint for $500-yikes) you do not have to. If you can­not find a local art sup­plies store (I am a fan of sup­port­ing the local econ­omy as much as pos­si­ble) you can order art sup­plies from one of the many arts & crafts spe­cialty retail­ers online.

What acrylic paints do I use? I use Golden acrylic.  Golden has large num­ber of col­ors and medi­ums.  In addi­tion to their stan­dard heavy body paints, they have a line of liq­uid col­ors and a slow dry­ing ver­sion called Open. Although you will likely start out with 2 oz tubes, I like that I can buy my paint in 4 oz jars or even larger sizes at my local art sup­ply.  Although I have largely switched over to Golden acrylics, I still pre­fer the sheen of Liq­ui­tex’s matte var­nish.  I have used Liq­ui­tex paints with great suc­cess in the past; Liq­ui­tex’s tubes are nearly inde­struc­tible.  I hear Wind­sor & New­ton and M Gra­ham are good brands but I have never used them.

As with all things art, your per­sonal expe­ri­ence with con­sis­tency, dry­ing times, afford­abil­ity and avail­abil­ity should fac­tor into your deci­sion. All the brands I have men­tions do have “starter” paint sets, which retail­ers usu­ally sell at a dis­count from buy­ing indi­vid­ual tubes.  Remem­ber you can always mix paints to get dif­fer­ent col­ors as long has you have good pri­mary shades as well as black and white.  If you do not like a brand for what­ever rea­son, you can min­i­mize your invest­ment in the failed exper­i­ment by pur­chas­ing a starter set.

For the record I am not affil­i­ated with Golden, Liq­ui­tex, Wind­sor & New­ton or M Gra­ham, nor have they given me any kind of incen­tive for men­tion­ing them here.  These are my own opin­ions based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ences & noth­ing more.

I hope you have found my dis­cus­sion of using qual­ity paint infor­ma­tive.  You can always check out my work at AKAJakeArt.com.

Yours in Art

Jake, Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all the art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use these images in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.