I often shop at our local Lidl supermarket. It does a range of garden, hardware, clothing and craft items. They take in the different things, usually just for one week, depending on the time of year.
I like their stretched canvases; they are a good quality and a very good price. I’m not so keen on the paint brushes though.
They sometimes have acrylic paints and acrylic pastes. Recently they had some acrylic pastes that I hadn’t seen before so I bought a box to try.
Whenever I get new items I try them out on a piece of thick paper or thin card. Then I keep the card with the paint/paste, this helps when I consider using it at some time in the future. I just need to check how it looks to see if it will give me the effect I want.
Obviously once you’ve used an item a few times you know what to expect. However this is a handy tip for the times when you buy new items or for things you only use occasionally.
I have included a couple of photos of the samples I have with the paints and pastes.
As you can see I’m not too fussy about it being very neat!
The lower one is a box of acrylic pastes. It had gold satin, aluminium, crystal (clear), nacre (mother of pearl) and the standard white paste.
Looking for Inspiration?
These types of sample cards can be handy when you want to paint something but don’t know what. They can provide a starting point for a painting when you consider what you can use them for.
That’s what I did when painting this picture of Yoda, from Star Wars. I had bought some metallic paints and wanted to use them. The sheen from the gold and bronze paints made a good ‘alien world’ background.
(As I've mentioned in other posts it is a good idea to paint around the edge of the stretched canvas as it allows you to hang the picture unframed if you want, that is what I did with this one.)
