you just wanna create a lot of paintings to get the hang of it.

Forget your tiers. Use good paint. You don’t get the hang of good paint by using bad paint, capiche?
You’re in Germany? Schmincke. They’re excellent paint manufacturers.

As a bonus question, what paints would you buy…

As a bonus answer I will tell you: Schmincke. They are AWESOME paints. Good luck to you in your efforts

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Schmincke. They’re excellent paint manufacturers.
As a bonus answer I will tell you: Schmincke. They are AWESOME paints

The point is: which Schmincke range? I agree that it is wise/safe to stick to a good brand (like Schmincke and Talens), and choose the product according to the money you want to spend, but I don’t agree that you should always buy the most expensive product. I mean: don’t buy bad paint, but if the paint is decent, that’s enough (good brands usually don’t make bad paints). I’ve seen good artists making very good painting with “cheap” paint, and poor artists spending huge amounts of money for paints they simply didn’t deserve. If you are a beginner, a decent paint is all you need.
Don’t rely on materials, rely on your capabilities.

In Germany, Gerstaecker (kreativ.de) is on average the cheapest. If you have a store where you live, their stores normally have the same price like online, plus some clearance sales. Boesner has noticeaby higher prices.

I wanted to buy Schmincke Norma but decided against that because they claim to add up to 5% solvent into the paint. (Info provided by their lab manager, in case someone wants to say it’s not true). Akademie is no solvents.

The choice depends on the way you will paint. I want the paint to be very soft. The answer to that is Rembrandt – very good but costs more, or Van Gogh, or Georgian, or Maimeri Classico. The last three are cheap and good enough.

If you are just starting, Gerstaecker currently has Fabriano Tela oil paper for a very good price. I tried it and I wish I had it from very beginning. It is the best and cheapest support to start, in my opinion.

He means W&N artist oils, not the winton range which is student grade.

Some of the answer to the question has to do with how you want to paint as well. For painting with a number of thin layers, for instance, you might want a more creamy paint with a higher pigment load (such as perhaps Gamblin 1980, the student grade, but you’d probably want the higher pigment load of Gamblin’s artist grade), while if you want to paint in a thicker, impasto style, you’ll want a thicker paint (W&N Winton is a very good choice here, or the W&N artist grade). Further, if you want to paint very large, many artists will use a less expensive brand and I’ve specifically heard that many use Winton.

I don’t have a wide experience with different brands, so if this is an issue you’d like to consider perhaps you could identify your preferred painting style (or how you’re planning to paint) and then ask others here for their recommendations. I do know that Gamblin 1980 cadmium paints contain an actual cadmium, but also some other pigment as well. This is probably because their earlier student version used pure cadmium, but because of expense, they added filler which resulted in a paint with too low a pigment load. So a number of years ago they changed the name to “1980” and added a second sort of “booster” pigment so that the pigment load was stronger. I can’t comment on how they work in comparison to regular cadmiums, but strongly suspect that other manufacturers of student paints probably do the same thing. FYI, where cadmiums are almost absolutely required is portraiture and figure painting, where their ability to create muted but rich colors that describe skin tones ver well is prized by many artists.

Also, two good sources of information about which specific pigments go into a particular paint are 1) the Blick[/URL] site (you need to navigate to the brand and specific paint you’re considering and then click on “pigment” where you’ll be taken to a swatch and a list of the pigments contained and their characteristics); or, 2) the Color of Art Database, which lists an incredibly comprehensive lists of individual pigments under broad color categories, such as “Blue” or “Red” and then you can find specific paints (often with a link to the Blick site) listed in the database by pigment number.