The Best Acrylic Paint Supplies for New Painters

If there’s one thing the team at Frederick MADE could choose to do every day, it would be to paint. We all love  painting, especially acrylic! We are proud to offer 20 paint classes every month, as well as our paint socials, where you can choose any of our previous paintings to work on at your own pace. 

We teach dozens of students every month how to become better artists and wanted to share some of our favorite paint essentials with you!

If you’re looking for some more paintings to do at home, we recommend you check out our selection of paint kits! All of our paint kits have pre-traced or paint by number canvases, with the brushes and paints needed to complete your painting. 

Our Favorite Paint Supplies

When you’re ready to branch out onto your own, here are our favorite supplies for acrylic painting.

1. Paint towels. One of our favorite tricks for acrylic painting is a paint towel. You could use paper towels, but the paint towels are used to wipe excess paint off before putting the brush in water. This keeps the water cleaner for much longer! We buy ours in bulk, but you are more than welcome to use an old towel/rag that’s lying around your house. 
2. Liquitex paints. Our very favorite brand of acrylic paint is Liquitex, specifically the Liquitex basics collection. 
3. Palette or palette paper. An essential for painting is something to hold the paint! You can get really cool palettes on Etsy that are ceramic, but plastic palettes are great too. Christy and Aimee both prefer palette paper, which comes in a pack. It’s great for mixing colors. Miranda prefers an actual paint palette. Try them both and see what you prefer! If you’re trying to buy a little bit of supplies to start, you can always use a paper plate as a paint palette in the meantime. 
4. Brushes. The most important tool when you’re painting is your brush. You will absolutely want multiple kinds of brushes when you paint, as different brushes work for different things. We recommend using a large flat brush (around an inch wide) for backgrounds and base layers, a medium round brush and a small flat brush as a starter set. Our very favorite brush is the filbert brush, which is a rounded flat brush. 

You can purchase other materials, like canvases and cups in many places. We get our canvases from Michaels and Joann’s, which always have sales. Target also has canvas boards, and any other craft store should have canvases. 

You can use a plastic cup, old Tupperware cup, or something else for your paint water; just remember that acrylic paint is permanent when it dries, so you don’t want to put your paint water in your favorite cup!

Do you have some painting essentials that we didn't mention? Let us know!