Here is a price list for each of the paints also showing the different sizes available. One important note to make is that as the size of the paint increases, the number of colours available decreases.
Choosing a brand of acrylic paints
Reader Question: Are Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylics good for a beginner or should I go for artist quality paints of some other brands like Galeria, Golden or Grumbacher?
I am new to the brands and painting mediums in the US so I’m unable to decide what to buy. I have worked with oils, watercolors and some student quality acrylics earlier using brands not available in US. Couple you please suggest what to buy?
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The Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylics that you mention are a very good brand, so yes, I can definitely recommend them for both beginners and professionals. Liquitex is one of my favorite brands of acrylics and I use them often to create my acrylic paintings.
My other favorite brand of acrylics is Golden, which is one of the brands that you mentioned. I use Golden brand and Liquitex brand acrylic paints almost exclusively. Both brands of acrylics have excellent consistency and coverage.
Winsor & Newton also makes good, artist quality acrylic paints. I have a tube or two of the Winsor & Newton Artists’ Acrylics and I’ve found them to be of good, reliable quality as well.
Winsor & Newton also creates a more fluid Galeria line of acrylics, as you mentioned. I haven’t tried this range myself, because they are thinner and I generally prefer thicker acrylics. They are listed as professional quality paints, however, so you might consider trying them.
Grumbacher is a student quality paint, which typically contain less pigment and more binder. To be honest I once bought a tube of Grumbacher Academy Acrylic Paint in Alizarin Crimson at the university art store when I was a student and needed crimson for a class, and it doesn’t compare to Liquitex or Golden. However, it gets great reviews on Blick, which probably makes it a good option for beginners on a budget.
If you want to use Artists’ Quality paint, but can’t afford Golden or Liquitex, I’d recommend Blick Artists’ Acrylics which has some colors as cheap as $3.25 a tube.
If that’s still above your budget or, as a beginner, you think you’ll be fine with Students’ Quality paint, you can try Liquitex Basics Acrylic Colors or the aforementioned Grumbacher Academy Acrylics, both of which get great reviews on Blick.
For a more in-depth look at the different types of acrylic paint, check out the Acrylic Paint page in my Guide to Buying Art Supplies.
Craft Paint
Craft Paint | 118 ml | 4 oz | $1.25 |
Artist’s Loft Level 1
Artist’s Loft Level 1 is the lowest tier in the art supplies section at Michaels. It is classified as “Student” grade paint and is the next cheapest paint that we reviewed in this video. Coming out of the tube the paint felt ok. It isn’t liquid-like as the craft paint is, but it is thinner than the professional-grade heavy body paints. You could definitely see the black canvas through the paint when applied. It would take a few layers to get a solid white. The tinting power of Artist’s Loft Level 1 was actually quite impressive. It beat many of the higher grade paints. With my other experience with Artist’s Loft Level 1, I would say the same thing as I said with the craft paint. It is not as vibrant as I believe it should be. Though it is more vibrant than the craft paint, it is still not up to par with its main competitor Liquitex Basics. If you are wanting cheaper paint, I would choose Liquitex Basics over the Artist’s Loft Level 1. .01/ml |
The craft paint is pretty much what you would expect. It is very thin coming out of the tube. It isn’t a really nice thin either. It feels very watery when on the brush.
Its transparency was actually better than I expected it to be. This might have been caused by the amount that I put onto the canvas, but it still surprised me.
The tinting power of this paint is also the lowest of the group. It takes a lot of white to make a real difference in tinting.
We did just use white for this experiment, but I do have experience using other colours of craft paint as well. Many of them are not as vibrant as artist paint brands. You can see in the example below a comparison of these two paintings.
On the left is Craft Paint and on the right is Liquitex Basics.
Also, craft paint can crack much more easily when dry compared to higher-level paint.
Overall, it is by far the cheapest in terms of price, but you lose a lot of quality as a result.