I just started to take my art seriously and decided to do murals as a career. I have done a few murals here and there for family and friends, as well as Artist in Residencies for Arts in Education. I now (thankfully) have a few projects lined up, one a large indoor mural for a school, and a couple of canvas pieces that will require installation. I got some great advice from some other threads about installing, however, my question is materials.
I have only done larger murals with left over paints supplied by the schools. What do you recommend for a good quality indoor mural paint? I have heard Nova Colors are awesome, but would like to find something more inexpensive. I am basically building a palette here since I do mostly oil paintings at home and only have a few tubes of acrylics for my small projects.
Please visist my site:
www.artblue.org
and THANKS! for the help.

Julie:)

Novacolors are actually considered inexpencive...

anyway even if you buy the most expencive set - it only takes a "few cents" of color to paint...

and you do not need too many colors.. 10-15 is more than enough - you mix the shades and tones...

so 50-70 dollars should get you setup

in my opinion looking for the cheapest paint is like driving over the speedlimit - you can save 5-10 min but risking to waste an hour getting a ticket in the best of the bad endings of speeding.

The same way with paint - the cheapest set(10-15colors) will run you about $50 and good quality (like nova) will cost $10-15 more but you are spending hours looking for a cheap one. Does your time worth less then $10 per hour?

Just wondering if you might be able to give me some advice for a good basic color palette. I am currently using white, raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, black and paynes grey. I am looking for advice on which colors to add to these.

Thanks.

Julie,

I have a few suggestions for you.

First, I paint my murals in Chromacryl acrylic paints. I buy them in bulk. When the murals are finished, I add several layers of Polycrylic, or a clear coat, to protect the artwork from bumps, and minor scratches, and also for better durability.

Second, let me share with you about my murals. I got my start painting murals a few years ago. I volunteered to paint murals at my high school after graduation. I painted a total of four murals, one for each of the foreign language classes. I did this over the summer. When the kids returned to the school the next year, they started to vandalize them. At the time, I had no clear coat on them because the work was still in progress. Everyday, I had to go back and touch up with the paint to cover up the writing and profanity. The administrators there were of no help. The vandalism continued. Finally, I finished the murals and put several layers of clearcoat on them. I went back to check on them a few months later and the kids scratched through the polycrylic protector, leaving my artwork marred. This didn't surprise me because it was a bad school to begin with. Well, I learned my lesson, I'm never doing another "free mural" again. People don't appreciate things they don't have to pay for.

I don't want to discourage your plans for painting at your school, I just want to warn you what the kids are like. I was crushed when I saw my murals (10 hours volunteered everyday for 4 months) being destroyed. I will never go through that again. I intend to start a mural painting business of my own in the near future, but this time, with a contract and a paycheck. No more freebies!

May I wish you good luck with your projects. Thank you!

Sincerely,
D. Windseth