cheap art

I moved into a studio apartment in February, and I love it, but the walls are a sad greyish beige. The first weekend I was here, I took myself to the art store and I bought some stuff to put on my walls.

I'll be honest: I'm more of a crafter than an artist. I can't draw for shit and I certainly can't paint anything representative. But I can do some abstract color things, and I can do it on a grad student's budget.

So, here's how to do some cheap art.

How cheap? Under $100 easy, under $50 if you're flexible, and under $25 if you're especially careful.

supplies

My biggest expense (until I started getting into canvases) was the paints. This is the area where I really indulged, by my standards (which are pretty low, but still). I believe I spent about $35;^[1] I could have done it for less if I tried and I definitely could have done it for more, but $35 was my comfortable indulgence level. In retrospect, I think that was just about right: the paints I got (from Golden's Open Acrylics line)^[2] are noticeably nicer to work with than the student-grade acrylics I used in school and the enjoyment of it over the past few months has definitely been worth more that $35 to me. I bought three tubes, plus one thing of sparkly gold paint from a different line for kicks.

If you want to do it cheaper for whatever reason, Liquitex Basics are also a good choice. They dry faster and are noticeably less nice, but they're a good texture, reasonably widely available in a good range of colors, and much cheaper. You can get 22ml tubes for under $4 a piece; these are small, but they should be enough for this project.

I used a mid-range watercolor paper (Fluid Cold-Press^[3] Easy Block, 9x12, 140g), which was $18, but you could go for Strathmore, which is more widely available and about half the price. I've also used Canson's mixed media paper for other projects in the past; it's a little thin for this particular application, in my opinion, but it's cheaper if you want to make a bunch or paintings^[4] and you could certainly make it work.

The last thing is brushes. You can get brushes for incredibly cheap; just go to the kids' art section of whatever craft store you're in. We're not doing anything especially delicate here. You could also get a value pack of brushes meant for students for maybe $6 or so, which is what I did. I'd also recommend getting a cheap palette knife ($2+), unless you have an old credit/debit/gift card that you're willing to ruin.

Optional add-ons:

1. Paint palette: nice, but can be replaced by a plate^[5] or a folded piece of tin foil.
2. Painter's tape: can help make crisp lines, but not necessary by any means.
3. Ruler: depends on how precise you want to get; in most circumstances, can be replaced by any straight edge (like, say, the cardboard backing of the pack of paper you just bought).
4. Dedicated water jar: unless you're careful, it's going to get stained, so designating one in particular will allow you the luxury of not being terribly careful.
5. Some manner of rag: if you don't want to use one million paper towels.

So, for the record, my theoretical budget to this point is:

• Paints: 4 x $4+ = $16+
• Paper: 1 x $9+ = $9+
• Brushes: 1 x $6+ = $6+
• Total: $31+

And my actual budget was something like:

• Paints: $35
• Paper: $18
• Brushes: $10
• Extras: $10
• Total: $73

I'm a grad student, so I'm on a pretty tight budget and seventy dollars of art supplies in one go was a true indulgence for me, but I have not regretted it for a second. I love working with nicer paints, the paper is thick enough to hold its own even when stuck to my walls with poster tack, and the brushes have held up shockingly well for how casually I've treated them. Basically, the money I paid back in February bought me (a) dozens of hours of stuff-to-do, and in particular stuff-to-do that's (1) not about school and (2) not on a screen, and (b) an apartment that feels less boilerplate and more like the place where I live.

painting

In terms of the actual painting of the thing, Pinterest and whatever image search you use are going to be your best buddies here, but you can also just...move paint around. My very favorite of the painting I did in the spring was three swipes of paint with a palette knife.^[6] I've done paint splatters, geometrics, a weird line thing inspired by the Chicago subway map...

I'm also a big fan of the work of Josef Albers; the Bauhaus school is generally a good place to look for inspiration for this sort of thing, and Albers' color interaction studies in particular are really interesting.

For a project like this, the skill is much more in the color selection than the actual paint-on-paper bit. Mine was easy (primary colors look nice together, big shock), but if you don't already have a color theme going in your space, you could try playing around on Coolors.

But honest to God, even if you don't think of yourself as an artist, you can just paint something and stick it on your wall. It doesn't have to meet some sort of standard; you can just do it.