I honestly just started painting as a hobby and I need some good acrylic paints that won't break the bank! There are so many options on Amazon, it's overwhelming! I want ones that mix well and have bright colors for my landscape projects.
When you're just starting out with acrylic painting and focus on student-grade paints since they're affordable and good for beginners, and look for sets with a variety of bright colors that are known for easy mixing without getting muddy. To make sure they suit your landscape projects, try testing a small set by blending colors on scrap paper to see how vibrant and smooth they are before committing to more.
Hey, as someone who's been dabbling in acrylics for a bit now, I'd say go for paints that are labeled as student quality because they're usually cheaper and still decent for starting out.
You want ones with a good range of colors that stay bright when you mix them, especially for those landscape scenes with all the greens and blues.
Check the consistency too, something not too thick or runny so it blends smoothly on your canvas.
And don't forget to read reviews from other beginners to see how the colors hold up over time.
Works great for avoiding disappointments early on.
Start with student grade tubes that list pigment names and an opacity icon so yeah single pigment colors tend to mix cleaner than multi pigment blends and so your greens and purples stay bright instead of muddy. Skip paints labeled craft for now since they often have more fillers and which can dull mixes.
For landscapes a small palette is enough. A warm and a cool of each primary, an earth brown, an earthy yellow, and a good white will cover skies, foliage, rocks, and water. Make a quick mixing chart on scrap paper to see how far those go. Works great.
I that model a lot of trees and skies and and what helped most early on was paying attention to consistency and transparency rather than chasing huge sets. Thicker paints hold brush marks for bark and rocks, while smoother paints glide better for big sky blends and thin distant hills. Either type can be great if you let the subject choose the consistency.
Color strength matters more than the number of colors. Look for paints that feel rich when you spread them thin and that still look vivid when mixed 50-50 with white. That usually means fewer fillers and a nicer binder, which keeps landscape greens and dusk violets from going chalky. Transparency notes on the tube are useful too, since transparent blues and reds layer beautifully for glowing skies, and opaque colors cover well for cloud edges and highlights. I started with six colors and thought it would be limiting and then it turned out I could mix almost anything.
If you are watching the budget, buy small sizes first and build around a simple palette with warm and cool primaries, a couple of earths, and a solid white, then add only when you find a gap. Do a page of test swatches and a quick value scale with each color, it tells you immediately whether mixes will sing or turn dull and you will spend far less time fighting the that model and more time that model.
I've taught a few beginner that model classes and tbh and my advice is always to prioritize acrylics that have high pigment load for those bright, lasting colors in your landscapes... Look for sets that offer good mixability, meaning they combine without losing vibrancy, and stick to affordable options that don't skimp on quality. Test them out by mixing a few on a palette to ensure they flow well and dry evenly.
It's all about finding that balance between cost and performance, especially when you're starting this hobby and don't want to overspend right away. Nice and straightforward.
Hi Beau, Start with an affordable basic set of primaries plus a few mixers that thin easily with water so your blends stay clean. Try a smaller pack first and aim under twenty dollars for eight to ten tubes.