Making Art Cheap

I spent many years having nothing to do with art, other than appreciating it. Once I picked back up on creating art, I had high standards on tools, paints, and mediums used.

However, art can be expensive to create. When you realize that you are painting as a hobby, then cost can play a role in how much you create. Not too much after I got back into art, I had some employment issues that, at first, killed my art funds.

Creativity can manifest in infinite forms, and when you want to create art, sometimes you have to get creative on materials, process, and sources.

Here are a few hints:

Check online (Facebook, craigslist, etc.) for give-away unused wood, furniture, used canvas, the list goes on and on. Basically, anything that you can apply paint to is a potential canvas. When I got to this point, I found myself with more opportunity as I learned to paint three dimensional objects and interesting textures. Using a piece of ply-wood compared to canvas can save you a lot of money per size.

Check Home Depot for mis-tint paints, in the paint section. This is all the paint they made for customers that came out the wrong color. A pint of paint is usually 50 cents to a dollar, but you may not have to much selection on color. In every town I’ve checked, there is at least one Home Depot where you find you can walk out with pints of white, black, brown, blue, red, yellow. With those, you can almost mix any color you want, at about 10 dollars or less. In comparison, one 8oz. color of high quality artist paint at an art store will run 7-10 dollars. In the end, all you need is liquid color that dries, and clearanced high quality interior paints work great.

Brushes are usually not too expensive, but they can be. Everyone has a metal fork in their house, and a fork can be used to spread paint, or mix colors. You may be limited (at first) with the techniques you can use, but I have seen a street artist use a metal fork to create an entire landscape in just a few minutes. Outside of cutlery, anything you can think of can be used as an applicator of acrylic.

Just go. There isn’t a need to go anywhere with your art work, but you do have to go. If you have sourced your equipment affordably, using tricks like the ones mentioned above, then you can afford to go a lot of places with art. And in the end, if you ruin a piece, you still have plenty of supplies to paint over it!

The above piece was made with pink construction paper, framed in a free craigslist frame. The paint cost very little and the time it took to create was about 20 minutes. Start by adding some color on paper and fold the paper. Open it back up and let dry. Once dry, cut out the shape along the edges of the acrylic paint. Attach to whatever background your using.

There are so many tricks to creating art affordably, and art is never really good or bad. There is either art, or the lack thereof. You make the call for yourself.

Thanks Keenan! We Love Your Work.

Sorry for the small upload....I will try to get a larger version from Keenan!

Thanks Everyone!