oil paiting on canvas DIY, how do I start?

Hi. You may want to buy "prepared" canvases. You can get some at your local Michael's. Often artists will buy meters of canvas, wooden stretching frames and will stretch the canvas, attach w/a staple gun and prepare with Gesso. Gesso is like a primer which is a white acrylic paint. You will also need turpentine to clean your brushes, and mineral oils. There are various oils that one uses to thin out the paint and make it more pliable. You will also need Oil Brushes (there are different brushes for different kinds of paint so make sure you get some that are ok w/oils). You will need oils, painter knives to mix paints and a pallet. Most art schools recommends that you use a backing sheet as a paint pallet. You can also get disposable pallets which you can use --- get some wax or aluminium paper to cover one's palet in between sessions...

Hope this helps.

You can get great art supplies for a reasonable price at Dick Blicks...www.dickblick.com

oil painting is a lot easier than people like to make out, especially for what you want to do. You can buy a small oil paint set and brushes really cheap, you'll get about 12 small tubes of paint. Canvases you can get in a lot of hardware shops even places like WHSmith do them, or bookshops. Depending on what effect you want on your wall, you can buy deep edge canvases which means the wood around the edge is thicke or canvas boards which has the surface of canvas but is just a board. I prefer to paint with these.

Hope that helps anyway. Best tip i can give is to not be afraid of it.

: )

Try your local library. When i decided to teach myself to paint with oils i used books from the library. Started with a small project and worked up to larger ones. My art can be checked out at hellosanantonio .com under artist name Guerro1 in the local artist section. I will on occasion post images of a project as it goes through various stages of completion.

don't open a shop, thats money down the toilet. open a paypal account on your website. pricing depends on lots of things like how time u spent. how much materials used, and so on. check locally around places that sells art that you want to show or your art would fit in. but now that i noticed you live in india, i would guess opening shop would be a breeze.

Great answers so far, but you should avoid using Mineral Spirits, as it causes the paint to crack over time. You can use them when you are completely fininshed with the painting to clean up with. Stick to using Turpintine while painting.

Go get some books first, read, then do!!!