Open any book about acrylics, and the first chapter deals with materials. The author always advises the beginning acrylic painter to buy the best materials they can afford.
Most books caution against choosing inexpensive student quality acrylic paints, explaining that these student grade tubes do not contain as much pure pigment as artist grade paint.
Bigger Problem: Muddy Mixing with Student Grade Acrylic Paint
When mixing colors with student grade paint, often the results are disappointing. Student acrylic paint is formulated with fillers to help keep cost per ounce as low as possible.
The problem with these books is that they don’t tell you WHICH brands of paint are considered to be student grade and which are considered to be artist grade.
So you, the super newbie painter, heads to the art store to buy your first set of acrylic paint. Upon arriving at the store, the tubes and jars all sort of look the same. It is overwhelming. So many colors, mediums, tube, jars, bottles !! And they you have to worry about the quality as well.
Few brands state right on the label: sort of crappy paint, but OK if it’s all you can afford.
I am not saying don’t purchase Student Grade Paint. I advising you that these brands are not as pure and don’t mix as well as artist grade paint. Consider yourself fully informed!
If you are knocking out a student project and really don’t need the brightest , cleanest mixing color, by all means buy the student paint! Heck that is why they manufacture this type of paint.
If you purchase online, it is a little easier to tell the artist acrylic paint from the student acrylic paint. Usually if you click on acrylic, the sub-categories are divided into sections for artist acrylic, student acrylic, decorative acrylic, classroom acrylic or tempra, etc.
There is a time and a place for everything. And if you want to paint, but can’t afford artist quality paint, please buy student grade and keep on painting.
Later when you the financial means to purchase better quality paint, you will look back on your student painting days fondly. And you will better appreciate the wonderfully rich, vibrant, and exquisite professional artist grade acrylic pigments.
Extremely lightfast (!), age-resistant, highly pigmented and transparent (lack of opacifiers does not equal decreased color load), I would argue that Lascaux Aquacryl Colors are specialist (“hybrid”) artist grade acrylic paints that are most excellent for (1) fluid acrylic style work when undiluted, (2) transparent watercolor style, or (3) for glazing. (Lascaux has acrylic mediums to assist with the latter two uses.)
I would challenge the idea of placing them in the student category?
Though these are an acrylic, Dick Blick places them in the artist grade category of watercolors. Cheap Joes lists them as professional grade watercolor paints. WetCanvas categorizes them as “high-quality, professional-grade, acrylic paints.” — http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/Products/censura.php?cmd=browse&category_id=237
I totaly agree about not buying cheap paints, it can put you off painting when you dont get the required results because of poor mixing qualities. You dont need a huge range of good quality paints to get all the colours you would want, a minimum of say 10 or 12 basic colours will get you all the colours you need to start off with, also brushes need to be resonable quality too.
Thanks for comment dot. I agree, just a few basic colors are enough. Added benefit is that a beginner painter also learns to mix color. — Cindy, editor, APR
I bought Art Noise and Sax True Flow student acrylics for my high school classes. The biggest problem with them is that they will actually not stay permanently on the canvas or board. We were doing a project that emphasized sky and the students were extremely frustrated that their previous day’s painting was being partially removed by the fresh paint. This is maybe what I should have expected when I purchase by the quart and gallon. I am purchasing better quality paints for next year for sure!