There are lots of ways to get started, while saving money.

You may want to try a limited palette, but I would not buy the cheapest tubes of paint.
I would avoid cheaper brands like Pebeo, Maries, and cheap box sets.

Solid brands that are good quality are W&N ARTISTS [ not Winton ! ], M Graham, Langridge.
Best value is Series 1, single pigments.

I would suggest a limited palette to start :

– Arilide yellow or hansa yellow [ PY74 ]
– yellow ochre [ PY42 ] ( for convenience, not strictly needed )
– Burnt Umber [ PBr7 ]
– Ultramarine Blue [ PB29 ] or Prussian Blue [ PB27 ]
– Pyrrol Red [ PR254/255 ] ( or maybe a cheaper napthol red )
– Titanium white [ PW6 + PW4 ] ( get a larger tube, eg. 100ml )

– linseed oil
– odorless solvent

The codes are the actual ingredients used – the “pigment”.

I have avoided toxic pigments above. [ no cadmiums reds/yellows or lead whites ]

You can get by with linseed oil to clean out your brushes instead of smelly turpenoid solvent [ or use odorless citrus based artists solvent sparingly ] .. brushes are ok for a day or two if left with excess linseed. Can use detergent and soap and warm water lather for a full clean.

Have a look at drawmixpaint on youtube for tutorial on how to mix colors from a limited palette [the so called ‘Zorn palette’ ] – spend a couple days mucking around mixing up colors and painting a big color wheel chart, you’ll learn a lot – I wish I had done this at the start : )

ps. if you’re in AUS, Art Spectrum are borderline ok for quality, good value, but avoid cheaper Art Prism .. just my opinion.

Mediums are a whole other topic – initially Id start with :
– lean medium = 1/2 each linseed and solvent ( for under-painting )
– fat medium = 1/3 each linseed, stand oil, solvent ( for final layers )
but there is a lot more to this – Art spectrum lean and fat mediums are fine, Langridge mediums are excellent.

Enjoy !!

tl:dr – buy small number of high quality tubes, avoid expensive pigments, stick to series 1 single pigments.

but I like a nice texture these days, so I glue a light linen down to a board then seal and gesso …

This is interesting to me, because I’m getting ready to make canvas boards out of raw linen and MDF for the first time. I was planning to seal and prime the canvas first, then cut and attach to the boards, but I would prefer to do it your way–attaching the linen first, then sealing and priming. This works for you?

Canvas pad is fine too

I agree. There are some good canvas pads out there, also canvas boards, pre-gessoed MDF boards, and pre-stretched and gessoed canvases. If you’re just starting out, you might want to start out the easy way, by buying already-prepared substrates.

Oil painting can be technically daunting for a novice. You might also want to consider using Galkyd, Liquin, or Neo Megilp as a medium for that reason. It’s a simpler way to get started. Drying oils like linseed or walnut, plus a solvent (I’m liking Gamsol rather than odorless paint thinner nowadays), are the classic way to go, but alkyd mediums like Galkyd, etc., might make it easier to focus on the art rather than the mechanics for now. (You can actually go solvent free if you want to avoid solvents altogether for health reasons. Mix your paints with drying oil and/or an alkyd medium, then clean the brushes with oil and soap.)

Jerry’s Artarama and Dick Blick have good prices and free shipping if you buy more than $35 worth.

Whatever you do, relax and have fun!

I haven’t used it yet myself, but I’ve been told that Plaza’s “Plaza Oil” is actually the Richeson Shiva Oils. If you sign up for membership with Plaza (free) they pretty regularly have 30, 40, or 50% off of one item sales, and you could snag the Plaza Artists’ Oil starter set. Online the price is listed at $33 USD right now for six paints, if you managed to get it 50% off that’d be $16.50 for 6 artist grade oil paints. Or a little more than that at 40% off.

It comes with:
Napthol Red
Arylide Yellow Light
Phthalo Green
Ultramarine Blue Deep
Burnt Sienna
Titanium White

The rest of the line (whether it’s called Shiva Richeson or Plaza Artist’s) is pretty affordable too, so you could add in a paint or two.

Arches oil paper is really nice to paint on, and you can paint in both sides of it so you can double your efficiency in learning. It does not act like normal canvas or have a weave similar or anything like that at all, so do not expect it to. I honestly suggest Hahnemühle oil paper as the oil paper of choice for someone who likes a surface that acts like regular canvas. It mimics the texture, feel, and finished look while drying less matte than Arches does in thinner applications of paint. I like oil paper because it is light, easy to tape down to a single piece of hardboard, and can be mounted to a hardboard if I make a finished piece that looks good on it.

For paints, M Graham are my favorite brand, but if you want to utilize a good student brand it is hard to find anything better than the Plaza Oils, Van Gogh, or Gamblin 1980s. Any of these work wonderfully. For most skins tones you can get away with using a “Zorn” palette: white, yellow ochre, cad red, and black. For a modern equivalent, cad red can become pyrol red (or 254), this has a very similar hue range but tings out a bit cooler than cadmium red, making pink areas of skin easier to achieve. This actually provides for a slightly larger mixing gamut, but the wider the range of colors one can make the more difficult it is to use the colors. This is the main benefit of a simplified palette of colors though, you can easily navigate the color ranges and tell when you are too yellow, red, or gray.

I like an extended palette that includes a Quinacridone Rose and Prussian Blue instead of using black, and I replace yellow Ochre with Indian Yellow (PY 110), this results in a full range color mixing palette. This is what I suggest people wanting a full palette to include as the colors are all strong, mix to any hue, and have wonderful versatility, allowing you to paint whatever subjects.

I avoid Strathmore products lately, been rather displeased with how they feel, maybe fine for some people but I just do not like them anymore. (I started with their products and got along fine but now find their quality seems to be restraining me. Do not get cans of paint if you are a beginner, they are easy to accidentally not seal completely when closing and end up with faster drying paint in the can.

For brushes, just grab a couple good hot hair bristle brushes, or my choice is Polytip Catalyst Synthetic brushes. I generally suggest for learning to paint small, you can do a lot more paintings this way with less paint and smaller brushes, all of this is affordable. Once you feel confident, then you can do some big works and buy a couple bigger brushes. There are a number of artists who would go counter to my suggestion, insisting a student not feel scared to dump lots of money on painting big, developing confidence and carefree attitude is good, but at the right time. Start cheap but quality, move bigger and more expensive later. Enjoy the oil painting journey!

Michael I had totally forgotten about Canson’s Canva-Paper, I meant to pick some up and give it a try, will have to do that on the next order.

A good place to start is with a limited palette and most frequently the one recommended focuses on the three primary colors: red, yellow and blue, and uses a cool and warm version of each. This type of palette is especially good for beginners because it helps a newbie learn how to mix paints. If you’re unfamiliar with some of these terms, a very good explanation is here: https://blog.mitchalbala.com/expanded-primaries-landscape-painting-palette/
Note that the article discusses a palette that works great for landscapes. It wouldn’t be a bad place to start for any new painter, but since you said you’re intending to focus on portraiture, you might want to ask the questions about the best paint choices for that in the Portrait Forum here at WC.

It’s hard to answer questions about brushes without knowing more about how you want to paint (impasto? glazed layers?). Different brushes serve different purposes and techniques. Starting out with some middle-of-the-road brushes is probably your best bet, and maybe you should get a few of the stiffer bristle ones and then also some softer synthetics. I find Utrecht to be a very good value for their quality, and probably about the right place for a beginner to start, as are some of the brushes made by Simmons. There are three basic types of brushes: filberts (oval shape at the end), flats (flat at the end) and brights (also flat at the end but with much shorter bristles). Filberts are very good for portraits, and flats are quite versatile too. Brights have their uses, but until you’ve got more experience, there’s no need to try them.