What equipment do you use for painting?

[Ava and Shaun]

A pair of reading glasses. Maybe that's why I never win the painting contest.

hahahaha love it!!!

[John Cook]

To add to what the others have said, a quality modelling lamp, at least 1000 lumens or more, white daylight.  A round element is good to help eliminate shadows and these usually have a magnifier lens, which I find is not very useful except for sculpting.  Buy the most expensive you can afford.  Same goes for brushes, cheap ones are a false economy. 

[Ithoriel]

To add to what the others have said, a quality modelling lamp, at least 1000 lumens or more, white daylight.  A round element is good to help eliminate shadows and these usually have a magnifier lens, which I find is not very useful except for sculpting.  Buy the most expensive you can afford.  Same goes for brushes, cheap ones are a false economy. 

Unless you are as hard on brushes as I am in which case go for cheaper! Top end art brushes or cheapies from The Works, they're all useful only for applying glue, or the like, after a week or two of painting, in my hands.

[John Cook]

Well, I'll just have to disagree.  You get what you pay for with most things and brushes are no exception.  Cheap brushes are never as good even when new, even synthetic ones never hold their points for very long.  I'm using a set of kolinsky sable brushes that are six months old at the moment.  I paint most days and their points are almost as good as new.  I think you probably need to look after your kit a bit better.  When using acrylics frequent rinsing is essential and at the end of a session wash them in warm water with washing up liquid, or even hair shampoo – they are a natural product after all.  The time taken on maintaining your brushes will always repay you.  Much the same goes when using oil based paints.   

[FierceKitty]

I'm with Mike on this one. With my production process, good brushes would be like putting caviar on scrambled eggs.

[Techno 3]

And tourniquets, sutres, morphine, amputation saws, life-support equipment, contexiphan IV drips....

I haven't cut myself for ages. We now have a couple of rescue dogs, one of which has claws that seem to be made of tungsten carbide. She does that does that job. She draws blood from my hands every couple of days.*
She's a Collie cross Jack Russell with a bit of rat thrown in.
Very excitable and bouncy, and just the right height to get at my hands, if she jumps up.
Sadly, one of the things I've inherited from my dad is 'waffer theen' skin on the back of my hands !
Kitchen towels and plasters on standby. 
* Once yesterday and once this morning..which helps keep the average up. (Blood, spurt, murder !!)  

[John Cook]

I'm with Mike on this one. With my production process, good brushes would be like putting caviar on scrambled eggs.

Never had real caviar, far too expensive for me I'm afraid, but I have had the faux lumpfish kind and I'd give it a go on scrambled eggs just to form an opinion.  Is caviar a bit like single malt, where the only sensible addition is more single malt?

[John Cook]

I haven't cut myself for ages.

About once every six to eight months, always entirely my own fault.

[FierceKitty]

Never had real caviar, far too expensive for me I'm afraid, but I have had the faux lumpfish kind and I'd give it a go on scrambled eggs just to form an opinion.  Is caviar a bit like single malt, where the only sensible addition is more single malt?

Not a drinker here, so not sure, but there's a real difference when you taste the real stuff. A friend was working in eastern Europe when the USSR went into hibernation, and wangled me about six months' salary's worth. I agree it's not worth the price, but it's jolly tasty.

[paulr]

I haven't cut myself for ages...

   

[Ithoriel]

Well, I'll just have to disagree.  You get what you pay for with most things and brushes are no exception.  Cheap brushes are never as good even when new, even synthetic ones never hold their points for very long.  I'm using a set of kolinsky sable brushes that are six months old at the moment.  I paint most days and their points are almost as good as new.  I think you probably need to look after your kit a bit better.  When using acrylics frequent rinsing is essential and at the end of a session wash them in warm water with washing up liquid, or even hair shampoo – they are a natural product after all.  The time taken on maintaining your brushes will always repay you.  Much the same goes when using oil based paints.

Brushes are stored point up with bristles protected by plastic tubing. They are washed in clean cold water between colours and cleaned with fresh warm water and brush soap at the end of every painting session.

The last Kolinski sable brush I had, a present from a friend also convinced I shouldn't use cheap brushes, lasted a fortnight ... or 9 full evening painting sessions depending how we're counting.

If Kolinskis work for you then great, go get 'em, but horses for courses and all that.

[John Cook]

The last Kolinski sable brush I had, a present from a friend also convinced I shouldn't use cheap brushes, lasted a fortnight ... or 9 full evening painting sessions depending how we're counting.

Really?  I find that extraordinary.  In over fifty years experience of using Red sable and Kolinsky sable for modelling with acrylics, and for convential picture painting with water colours and acrylics, I have never had a brush perform so badly as you describe, not even a cheap synthetic one.  I suspect something else is going on here that I don't know about.  It is certainly true that acrylics can be very hard on brushes and once they get under the ferrule and dry, the brush is ruined.  That is why frequent rinsing is necessary during use.  Also sable is not really suited to enamels because they need to be cleaned with solvents which will damage them and they won't last.  For enamel paints synthetic brushes are better but I don't have much use for enamels these days.  The main problem with sythetics is that the points curl, even on the best quality ones, but holding the bristles in hot water will help to straighten the points again.  Don't bother putting brushes back in the plastic tubes they come in, it is unnecessary and can actually damage them if you are not careful.  It is also pointless with cheap brushes.  After they have been cleaned just return them to a point by running them between your lips before storing them.  Another thing with cheap brushes, using water that is too hot to wash them can actually do more harm than good, because the glue that is used to hold them in the ferrule is poor quality and can soften, causing bristles to fall out or to splay making it imposible for them to hold a point.  Solvents can have the same effect.  Under normal circumstances, painting something most days, I expect my brushes to last substantially longer than six months.  I'm using a set of six, 00 - 4, that I've had for at least that time and even the ones that get most use, 1 and 2, still have good points.  Once worn out for applying detail the larger ones are still useable for applying primer, undercoat and base colours when detail is unnecessary, and for dry brushing.

[mmcv]

I'm surprised, I found that cheap, low-quality brushes I used were ruined within a couple of months, whereas the Kolinski sable ones I bought back in 2018 are still going strong and I've not had to buy a new brush since.

[Norm]

I use my reading glass (3.25) together with a head visor magnifier.

Amusingly, in my last painted batch, I decided not to use the head magnifier and thought I was doing quite well. At the end of the session, I put the magnifier on ..... Yikes, what an awful paint job! So my readers alone are no where near good enough to do a paint job.

As for the the brush thing, I buy mid range and get mid range time from them :-)


 

[John Cook]

I'm surprised, I found that cheap, low-quality brushes I used were ruined within a couple of months, whereas the Kolinski sable ones I bought back in 2018 are still going strong and I've not had to buy a new brush since.

That is more or less my experience.  There are a number of articles on line that give the same advice - cheap brushes are a false economy, buy the best you can and look after them.  They can't all be wrong