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The Range Art collection
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Message
Posted
Hi all,
Just a quick note to say that I have recently come across the art section in the shop The Range. What has struck me is that when comparing the prices of canvas some of the Range ones are really cheap. I picked up some Winsor and Newton 40x100 canvas for £4, which is showing on Amazon for ten times that price. Their canvas board is also super cheap it would seem. I only really use acrylic and canvas so not sure if maybe some of their other art materials are as cheap.
Just wanted to give a heads up, as I don’t know about you but I find the cost of the art materials especially with me still learning and going through canvas really quickly, does add up. Means that I am always looking for a bargain :)
C x
Edited
by Carrie Flinte
Posted
Art materials are incredibly expensive try looking at Kolinsky sable brushes..... I think for practice and learning why not . Certainly if you buy “names” . But, the big but , you do get what you pay for ( unless it’s a Kolinsky sable brush) and you will find the best you can afford will reflect in your work. . You don’t have to buy dozens of colours for instance , learn how to mix and just buy the minimum. I watched a friend last week doing a nice watercolour on crap paper I wanted to snatch it off her ( but I’m quite lady like) so I didn’t. If you can get good names at good prices do it. Stay clear of Chinese crap. I will continue to salivate over Kolinsky sable brushes .
Posted
I buy quite a few art things from the Range as well as garden furniture. But the seem to be limiting there ranges lately. They were particularly good for setting up as sets are usually cheaper per item than if you buy things separately. The head quarters is down the road from me, so their local shop probably has the widest range in the county. However, I buy some materials from Jackson’s and recently from Derwent. When I get back to oil painting, I will probably buy some W&N new cadmium free paints online from the manufacturers and get a new customer discount.
Posted
The trouble with 'cheap' products is that all too frequently they're also extremely nasty. There's precious little sense saving money on the substrate on which you're painting, then using expensive paint on it applied with expensive brushes. If it's canvas you want, The Canvas Store is a good source of supply - and if they're not cheap, they're not ruinously expensive either. As for brushes, Kolinsky sable is expensive - but you don't need to use them. Synthetic brushes have come along by leaps and bounds in the last ten years or so, and Rosemary & Co will be able to provide you with a set of brushes for a tenth or less of the cost of one genuine sable. This may seem to be going against my point about 'cheap' supplies - but a) Rosemary & Co are inexpensive, rather than cheap; and b) sable is very nice to use - unless you're the animal which provided it -but anything but essential.
And finally Esther (for those of a certain vintage) cadmium-free oil paint? Why? It's a complete gimmick on the part of artists' suppliers, which takes advantage of people's genuine environmental concerns - we had to fight the EU to prevent cadmiums and cobalts from being banned, following the heavy restrictions on lead white; W & N isn't a British company any more, it has too little resemblance to its former self - it isn't interested in much beyond profit: some of the advice it provides online is risibly inaccurate. The contribution made by artists' use of paint to environmental problems is minuscule, if it exists at all; all you do by swallowing the paint-makers' marketing ploys is advance the day when metal-based pigments get banned, with the consequent loss of some of the most lightfast, durable, and powerful colours presently available. That'll suit some of these conglomerates, because they can then sell inferior paint at inflated prices, pretending that they're the equivalent of cadmium and cobalt based pigment - which they are not.
W & N - or Colart, as it really is - still make one of the best acrylic paints you can get, and their watercolours are also among the best. But they're not a warm, cosy little company, and: they need watching. Because if they can cut a few corners, they will - the while telling us that they're doing so for environmental reasons.
Posted
You’ll struggle to produce good paintings using cheap and inferior products. The well known branded items from The Range are fine, but their unbranded stretched canvases are horrible.
The canvas is thin and hard, and the stretchers are poor quality thin wood including knots, thrown together with a few staples. They will definitely warp!
The same applies to paint and brushes, inferior products will hinder your progress!
I would never recommend beginners to start off using stretched canvas, it’s flexible and not the easiest support to master..
The canvas boards are a better option, or for general oil sketches, the blocks or pads of ‘canvas’ paper are more than adequate. I’ve used the Fabriano Tela blocks which are excellent.
I concur with Robert regarding cadmium-free oil paint, it’s inferior... and best left on the shelf!
Posted
I had the same experience Alan with the Range’s own canvas board, it was really poor quality. I tend to use the brand names although not an expert in what works and doesn’t, Winsor and Newton and Daler Rowney canvas works well for me, and they do seem to be cheaper in the Range than I have found elsewhere. I do prefer canvas board and find it easier to work in but I like to work in the post box shape, and canvas board seems to be restricted to rectangles (or at least the ones I have found).
In terms of paint brushes I really love the System 3 painted brushes. I had originally bought a 12 set of unbranded paint brushes from Amazon for next to no money but quite quickly realised they were that cheap for a reason, especially when all the bristles kept coming loose.
C