Finally the last part of my overview before I start on my review of what medias I have.
Tempera and Poster Paint: Anybody who ever did a painting project in elementary school knows what these are. Both are non-toxic and water-soluble. They're more vibrant and opaque than watercolors, but are transparent compared to acrylic paints. These paints also have a limited selection of colors, and are usually made with cheap pigments so mixing colors aren't an exact science like you think it should be. And they only really work well on paper media, but can be used for more.
Watercolor Paint: Again most people have used watercolors as a kid. Cheaper watercolors can be easy to clean up, and you can even find washable watercolors for younger painters. For coloring/painting, it can be had to control the paint and depth of the color, so practice and experimentation is needed. You'll also need to use watercolor paper or heavy weight paper.
Acrylic Paint: There are two kinds of acrylics: craft and artist. Craft acrylic paint usually comes in bottles and can be quite cheap in price, while artist acrylic paint comes in tubes and are average in price. Generally speaking craft acrylics can be used in good quality on a range of media from paper to ceramics, while artist acrylics are better for canvas or heavy weight paper. Acrylic pain is plastic base therefore it's permanent, but it can scratch off of some surfaces over time. So it's a good idea to spray those surfaces with a sealer, porcelain sealer is what I usually use in a matte finish but you can use a glossy finish.
Oil Paint: Oil paints are well liked with some for their vibrant colors, textures that can be created, blending abilities, and a slow dry time that allows for slow work. However, that slow dry time makes it temperamental, and usually you want to put a varnish over them. Plus, clean-up is a pain due to the fact that you have to use solvents on the brushes, skin, etc.
Blending Tools: There are a few different one you can buy including colorless blending pencils, colorless blending markers, cheese cloth, and and blending stumps (or paper stumps). Kneading erasers are also a blending tool as well as an eraser. You can use fingers, cloth, paper, and/or tissues as well. It just depends what you like by testing them out. I personally use stumps and kneading erasers when working with drawing pencils, charcoal, and pastels. And I use colorless blending pencils for my color pencils to blend colors together or to get a smoother color.
Erasers: Not all erasers are created equal. there are quite a few from the typical pink rubber erasers we all used in elementary school to grey kneading eraser. You have rubber, art gum, kneading, and vinyl eraser. Rubber can also be found in a sharp-able pencil as well as the big pink shape we all know and love to flip on the table. And Vinyl can be found similar to rubber pencil erasers in the form or a click eraser which are like pens. I generally use vinyl erasers in both block and click form for my drawing. I personally don't like art gum erasers, yet they're great for getting pencil off of ceramics. Also kneading erasers don't play well with others in certain weather, so be careful with them.
Pencil Sharpeners: Like erasers, these are not all created equal. And honestly it depends on what you like, it's a matter of testing them out. Some materials do require their own type of sharpeners such as you need to use sandpaper though you can use pencil sharpeners but you risk messing up either one, and crayons need their own sharpener. If you're lucky Crayola might still be putting crayon sharpeners on the back of the boxes of their larger box sets. Just remember when sharpening pencils that isn't always the sharpener's fault sometimes it can be a faulty pencil. For example, most of the time you are just coming up to the cracked lead, soft leaded pencils are known for this, and sometimes a big chunk of wood breaks off this could be caused by a snag in the wood, or using the wrong technique for the sharpener.
Fixatives: There are two main fixatives for charcoal, pastel, and pencil medias: workable and final. Workable is designed with pastel, chalk, and charcoal in mind. This makes what you have permanent to the paper but still pliable so you can blend, shade, and erase it without losing too much. Final is fully permanent, so you shouldn't be able to work with anything sprayed with it. I use a final fixative on my drawings, which helps me work in stages when I'm working with smeary colors. You can also use hairspray as a cheap alternative, just be aware that some can cause paper to wrinkle and/or cause it to turn yellow.
And now it's time for reviewing.
-FoxCat ya later
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