Advice needed on which paint to use

Welcome to the wonderful world of painting, the most important thing is to enjoy the experience! Start off working small size A4-ish perhaps and I would start off experimenting using watercolour. You can buy a decent half-pan set fairly cheaply, look at the Cotman range, they’re student quality but very good. A couple of synthetic brushes should be enough to make a start… Daler Rowney are excellent. A pad of say Bockingford watercolour paper or similar, min 140lbs weight - that’s pretty much it! Experiment using the wet-in-wet technique for moody expressive effects… the possibilities are endless! This is one of my small watercolours using this technique…

In that case I’d opt for acrylics… Get some reasonably decent quality paints and brushes. Robert Jones is our resident acrylics expert, I’m sure that when he logs in, he’ll give you some excellent (and probably lengthy) advice about how to get started!

When it comes to acrylics I don’t think you would get better advice from anyone else but Robert , he certainly knows his stuff . 

We haven’t heard from Robert as yet, so I’ll chip in with my limited knowledge of painting with acrylic, oils being my primary medium. There are dozens of different manufacturers, but always better to stick with the known brands, and that goes for any medium, not just acrylic. As you’re just starting out on your creative journey, I would recommend using the W&N Galeria brand. A tried and tested product which is excellent in my opinion, and they are very competitively priced. Have a look at the available sets on Amazon, or Jackson’s Art website, or buy the separate tubes, you only really need five colours plus white, in fact you can mix a vast range of colours using just the three primary colours (red, blue and yellow)…  Depending on the size of the support, a couple of hog or synthetic brushes will be adequate, say a number 6 and a rigger brush if you’re adding detail. Choose from Round, Flat or Filbert, the latter being my preferred shape. Pads or blocks of canvas paper, A4 or A3, these come ready primed and ready to paint on. There is a range of stuff to help with the paint flow etc, but just plain old water will be fine. Finally, a good helping of inspiration is always helpful, so get out and about with a sketchbook and work up your finished paintings back home. An acrylic I did a while back… Rye Harbour Entrance, acrylic on canvas board 40x50cm

Lengthy, moi?  Ahem.... actually, I think Alan has said just about all there is to say.  Acrylics are available in several forms, liquid, more solid and opaque, or interactive (which means they can be re-wetted, but if I were you I'd avoid those to start with).  The brands available are Liquitex, Golden, Daler-Rowney, and Winsor and Newton - there's Galeria from W & N, Cryla, System 3, and a few others, from Daler Rowney.  If I were starting out, I would go for acrylic, and would make a start with Daler-Rowney's System 3: if you find they're too fluid for you, try Cryla from the same company.   The Chromacolour UK brand, only available from their website, is one that's available in pots - it can be used as an ink, a very fluid paint, or can be thickened; they also made tubes - not sure if they still do, but I found they had a tendency to dry out in the tube. A thing to remember (sorry if I'm  repeating what others have said) is that they do dry quite quickly compared with oils, and once they have, you're stuck with them (but can always paint over them).  They're good for the technique of glazing - washing thin colour, let down with acrylic medium or even water, over an opaque base.  Though many other techniques are available. By the way - I started out with oil paint, around about 60 years ago: I wouldn't discourage you from doing the same, or trying watercolour or gouache, if you fancy a more traditional medium with just about unlimited possibilities.  On the other hand, acrylics have minimal if any odour, don't need solvents, and are easy to clean up - always rinse the paint very thoroughly out of your brushes before it even begins to dry, because it's very hard to restore a brush to its original condition if acrylic has dried in them.

Chat GPT/AI - embedded advertising, and the kind of thing the anti-spam software doesn't pick up.