Oil Painting on a Budget

We may often find our oil painting supplies dwindling just as our budgets seem to get tighter and tighter. Even Pablo Picasso found himself with no money for his art, but managed to paint anyway. Creativity will serve you well beyond your artwork if you use it to find ways to paint without having to buy new supplies. In Picasso's case, his "Blue Period" coincided with the poorest days of his life. The reason being not only a depressed state of mind, but more importantly because he could no longer afford pigments and had only blue left to paint with!

Surfaces
Expensive cotton duck canvas is not the only surface that can be used for oil painting. If you look hard enough you can probably find plenty of alternatives around your house/garage. Wood is a great surface. It's easily primed with a coat of gesso, and depending on the thickness, can be self-sufficient. A thin piece of wood, less than 1/2 an inch in thickness or so, will do better if gesso is applied to both sides of the wood in order to prevent warping. Very thin, bendable sheets of wood can also be pinned or clamped to a surface in order to keep it flat in the painting process. Similarly, paper can also be used for oil painting as long as it is fairly thick and preferably acid free. If you don't have wood or thick acid-free paper around the house, try looking in your closet for old clothing that can be recycled into an oil painting surface. Experiment with cotton and linen fabrics that can be stretched like canvas, but be sure to prime well with acrylic gesso. If you don't have stretchers, stretch and secure the fabric to a board or wall. Unstretched artworks are very popular these days.

Brushes
I have to admit that I have no ideas to substitute alternatives to oil paintbrushes simply because I believe there are none. If you take very good care of the brushes you already have, they should last a lifetime. If buying brushes for the first time, be sure to invest in quality ones that won't fail on you once your budget hits rock bottom. However, you can still be creative if working with a limited number or size of brushes. For example, if you were planning on painting a very large piece but only have small brushes, take a try at Pointillism. It's a long and tedious task of placing tiny dots of colour next to one another to form the illusion of a blended application. You never know, maybe you'll become a modern age Georges Seurat!

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