This list is for general oil painting classes and beginning students. Some of my more advanced portrait and figure painting students may require more colors than listed here. This post contains affiliate links, but I only promote materials which I personally use and recommend!

Paints

Please buy professional quality, rather than student quality paints. Suggestions include but are not limited to Utrecht, Gamblin, Winsor & Newton, and Rembrandt. Student grade materials generally use a bunch of filler instead of pigment, which causes you to use more paint and often it becomes impossible to mix a strong color because the pigment is so diluted. It doesn't save you money in the long run!

Simple Palette for Portrait Painting:

This is a good basic beginner palette which leans a bit warm and tends to look natural. Most projects can be done with this palette, but if you have intense turquoise or hot pink colors in your composition, you may not be able to quite reach those colors.

• Titanium White
• Ivory Black
• Ultramarine Blue
• Cadmium Yellow
• Cadmium Red
• Burnt Umber

Primary Color Palette:

This palette will get you as close as possible to being able to mix any color, similar to the CMYK inks in an inkjet printer. But, it's not quite as easy to control for beginners.

• Titanium White
• Ivory Black
• Cadmium Yellow
• Quinacridone Rose
• Phthalocyanine Turquoise

Other Palette Additions I Enjoy

If you're looking to really stock up on everything you need, these are some other pigments I recommend and often use:

• Burnt Sienna: is a perfect complement to Ultramarine Blue, can practically make a painting with just those two colors and white.
• Utrecht Yellow-Green or Rembrandt's Permanent Yellowish Green: Makes a really interesting combo with Quinacridone Rose. I consider these two with black and white to be a fantastic skin tones palette!
• King's Blue: It's a great color to tone down reds and oranges for skin tones. It's a convenience color as it is simply a mixture of Ultramarine Blue and Titanium White.
• Neutral Grays: These can be really interesting to work with either for reducing the intensity of other colors, or for creating an overall softer and more natural palette.

What’s a “Hue” and is it acceptable?

When a tube uses the word “hue” (for example, Cadmium Red Hue) it means that it isn’t using the pigment named in the color, but is using a less expensive and/or less toxic pigment with a similar color. So long as you’re using professional quality paints, you should be ok if you chose the hue option.

Brushes

For beginners, I recommend a set of synthetic filbert brushes. This is what I use for about 90% of my painting tasks, they're versatile and easy to take care of. In the future I'll add a link here for all my in-depth opinions about different brushes and their uses, but for now get some brushes like these:

Palette

I recommend either a flat hardboard palette or a disposable palette. Avoid anything with wells or other indentations as they are difficult to clean out.

Medium

I like to keep it simple to start out with. Just one oil (like Linseed Oil or Walnut Oil) and Odorless Mineral Spirits (Gamsol is one brand) are all that are needed.

Clean Up

• Palette Knife
• Paper Towels or Rags
• Bar of white soap (Ivory or Irish Spring, for example)

I do not personally use mineral spirits or other fancy soaps to wash my brushes. I find it unnecessary and in some cases damaging to the brushes. If I really need to rinse a large and very messy brush, I might do so in mineral spirits or an oil (baby oil, walnut, etc) and then finish with the bar of soap. Unless I am really making a mess, I find the bar of soap is totally adequate.

For palette clean up, just scrape off what you can and wipe off the rest with a towel. No need to wash or use a cleaner to get it perfect. I allow my palette to build up a patina, just making sure I remove any chunks of paint.

Painting Surfaces

Options For Sketches/Practice

• Dura-Lar Matte Film: I use this for sketches, practice, and color swatches because it’s easy and quick to paint on. Since it’s really smooth, the paint slides around quickly and can be covered more quickly than other surfaces. The downside of this is that your brush marks will always show, so it’s not as good for smooth paintings or more finished work. I recommend taping it to a drawing board while painting.
• Canvas Sheets: Also called a canvas pad, this is literally sheets of primed canvas made into a pad form. If you look on the back of the sheet you will see it is fabric. If it is canvas paper this is often not a good option and has caused many problems for my students. I’d avoid it. I recommend taping canvas sheets to a drawing board while painting.
• Canvas Panels: Inexpensive canvas panels (canvas glued to cardboard) can be a good option for sketches, especially if you want one that’s easy to handle since it’s rigid and doesn’t need to be taped down.

Options For Formal Paintings

• Canvas Panels: Some canvas panels are well made, feature hardboard or gatorboard instead of cardboard, and can be considered for more finished work.
• Primed Hardboard: Ampersand’s Gessobord in addition to other brands offer convenient hardboard panels that have been primed for painting. These are great for people who enjoy smooth surfaces and don’t like canvas texture. Just make sure that the primed surface is not shiny so there’s some tooth for the paint to adhere to.
• Stretched Canvas: This is a traditional choice for an oil painting support. There are many options including cotton, linen, polyester and various stretching and priming choices as well. While I won’t get into all the differences here, suffice to say that a quality canvas that has no pin-holes when held up to the light, has no puckers in the corners, and appears square should serve as a good painting surface.

Blick Studio Canvas

Other Useful Items

• Drawing Board: I recommend getting an 18" x 24" smooth sheet of masonite/hardboard along with some masking tape. This will allow you to set your reference photo and painting side-by-side as you work, and you can even clamp your easel on it as well. This is what I do in my demos. I purchase mine from Blick Art Materials but hardboard is also available at hardware stores.
• Easel: While it can be a little weird to get used to at first, it’s incredibly helpful for many reasons to work at an easel. The one pictured at right is available across multiple brands and should cost around $40. It packs up small if you prefer to store it when not in use, is lightweight, and easily transported. I use these in my own studio as well.
• Black Foamcore Box: I like to use a small box made out of black foamcore to control the light around still life objects. Another option is to use any other type of box (around 12” square is a good size, depending on the size of the still life) and tack up fabric or sheets of dark construction paper on the inside.

Hardboard at Blick

Blick Tripod Easel

Have any questions or feel like I left something out? Just let me know in the comments!

Need some help figuring out how to use this stuff??? Check out Foundations of Oil Painting, available through self-study or live classes, and is perfect for the beginner or someone who is trying to get their paintings to look real.

Thanks for reading and happy painting!