Help and advice

Thank you for that Mea and it is always an advantage in painting on cheaper surface when beginning in that you don't have to worry about the cost factor.Of course there is the downside that it might be difficult to get any sort of results especially if comparing or trying to recreate.Wesson used to recommend student used Bockingford watercolour paper for the very reason that you could let rip and not worry about waste.Good morning to you Robert.Still mulling over options but realistically, taking into account allergies and space,I think WMO have gone into the lead.I would sort of prefer to try traditional oils and have seen great possibilities for cleaning brushes in walnut oil but with it there seems also a lot of soap and water rinsing and double buckets involved.Which in itself is no harm but at the moment I am getting away with using the family bathroom to do any of the water and brush stuff but not sure if I started to annex it for buckets and walnut oil etc how long my luck would last !!! Can you tell me Mea where you bought your paper?Thank you

Hi all, I thought I'd come back and provide an update seeing you were all so helpful.So,got myself some tubes of W&N Artist,Burnt Sienna,Burnt Umber,Ultra,Titanium White,Yellow Ochre and Perm Alizarin Crimson.Some cheap 8x10 and some 12x10 canvas boards.Some linseed and some Zest It thinners and brush cleaner.Started messing about.The first thing to go was the Zest It.Blew the head and indeed the lungs off me.So back to drawing board(excuse the pun) and some more research.Off I went and bought some WMO and indeed, very handy for the clean up.Was in a bit of a rush when buying and bought Cad Yellow Light which is fine, and Phthalo Blue,which as we know is wicked stuff.Strangely these two pigments seem to flow much better than the Artist Quality? But I must say,I love oils and see already the attraction.Not necessarily better than watercolours but handier in lots of ways.But boy am I making a mess. I will need a good plan of action when stating an oil painting session to make sure I can handle the different elements,but what I can say is that dropping a palette knife full of paint on a beige carpet is not to be recommended.In fact painting in a room with a beige carpet is never a good idea but it's the spare bedroom and having commandeered it,I can hardly start ripping it up. For the W&N Artist oils I am using walnut oil from the supermarket to clean at the end of the painting session and it is working fine.There would be an issue I believe if I got the supermarket oil into the paint but so far so good. So did a painting today combining both oils, not something I'd intend to carry on with, but am trying to find my way, and used the adapted Linseed Oil for both oils to thin with and it worked fine but again I am sure that is not a great idea when one would get 'serious'.For some reason I have an aversion to using water to thin the WMO and would prefer to use either a 'thinner' or a Linseed, so I am going to buy some of the specially adapted thinners tomorrow or at least have a sniff and see what they smell like as anything strong is an issue,which I sort of suspected anyway.If the thinners are good then I may lean more towards the WMO for now with a view to moving on to traditional oils. I am still struggling with the fat over lean thing and how one works that,whether it be 'alla prima' or 'considered'.If one starts off thinning with a minute amount of linseed, how does one proceed?Is it more linseed and more again for each layer and which is considered fatter, oil from the tube or oil with linseed added?I presume oil with linseed added so again I think it is about learning how to guage how much linseed you have used and how much you will use for the next layer? I also am baffled as to how to paint plein air in that regards....does it not matter if you are painting 'alla prima'? But as I say, I think it has been love at first go.In fact whilst I never had any inkling to go painting outdoors with watercolours I can see it happening with oils.Would solve the issue with thinners as well !! Although it might seem like getting ahead of myself,I think these pochade boxes look brilliant and would solve a storage space issue and make things more manageable in the room.When you buy one, are you committing to painting in a certain size?Do they come suitable say for two sizes in the lid?Thank you all again, this is a great adventure!