Money Is Scarce and Inflation Is A (insert not nice word)

    You would think that an artist like myself have an over abundance of art supplies at the ready. We’ll you thought wrong. You see my walls may be lined with painting after painting but my art supply collection is quickly diminishing. Which means, if Tai and I want to make a bunch of paintings in order to cover the walls of the set, we’re going to have to buy supplies. You don’t really realize how expensive something is until you’re forced to buy a lot of it. And as someone running on the salary of a jobless high school student, this isn’t the most ideal situation to be in.

    So the plan became, come up with a budget. Find the cheapest art supplies on the market and guesstimate how much of each we’ll need. The first step was to figure out what we did have. Tai has 5 small canvases (it isn’t enough to cover a wall but it will minimize costs a bit) as well as paintbrushes we can use. She also has a tarp we can use to protect the surface we’re painting on. I also have paintbrushes (granted they are a bit beat up). We both have paint palettes to put the paint in and I have a miniature easel. Now we need to figure out what we don’t have.

    I started with paint. Because the artist characters do canvas painting, theirs really only two options of paint: Acrylic and Oil. Now I love Bob Ross but I also love not being broke and paint being dry in less than 2 days so oil paint was off the table. Acrylic paint can be found in many different varieties. It’s quick drying and easy to work with which will make the process of creating the paintings much easier given that it’s two amateurs trying to make professional looking artwork. If we were going for professional grade paint we’d likely be spending about 5 bucks per singular tube (you heard that right). So definitely not professional grade. Packs of multiple paint tubes exist (thankfully) so we decided to find one that both had a decent variety of colors while still staying cheap. You would think a retailer like Amazon would likely have a cheap set but to our surprise we can get a set of 12 paints for $10 at Micheal’s (most paint sets on Amazon are above $15) Item #1 has been added to the cart.

    What good is paint when we don’t have something to put in on! Which is why the next thing on the list is canvases. We know we need at least two big canvases for the painting being focused on in the opening. You see a funny thing about canvases is that they are usually real pricey no matter where or who you get them from. I checked the Micheal’s website first since the paint was cheaper there. And the lowest price i could get on a 16” x 20” canvas was about $13 not including tax which means if we wanted to get two we’d be spending about $26. At first I sighed in frustration and defeat. But then I thought about checking Amazon again. And worth a shot it was because I was able to find a 11” x 14” canvas that was only $9 which means if we wanted to get two, we’d spend about $18 (that’s $8 dollars less than the original price). On top of that, the canvas comes in a pack of 3 meaning we’d also get two smaller canvases included in that price, ultimately lowering our spending! So item #2 has been added to the cart bringing our total to about $28.

    So canvases are expensive, and at the moment we have about 11 canvases (8 small ones and 2 big ones) But it we’re really trying to cover the walls, we need to think of a way to get paintings up without canvases, and what better way than mixed media paper! It’s thick, and durable so it will withstand acrylic, and it should be easy to stick to the wall (an issue we’re gonna have to resolve with the canvases) I know they definitely sell it in sketchbook form so the goal is to see how much of it and how large we can get it for a price that is doable. So I checked Micheal’s website. There’s I found that the cheapest pack included 15 sheets of 9” x 12” paper for $13. Not bad but could be better. I checked Amazon and low and behold you can get 60 sheets of the same size paper for $12 bucks which is definitely a better value. Will we need 60 sheets? Probably not, but every dollar counts. Remember we’re running on the salary of an unemployed high school student who is also trying to save up for college mind you. So 60 sheets it is, and with that our 3rd item added to the cart bringing our total to $40. 

    There is one non essential item that would be ideal to have but isn’t entirely necessary and that is an easel. Tai found one for about $19 on Amazon which is surprising cheap given that most retailers sell that for prices in the hundreds range. It’s still not decided whether or not we’ll get it but if we do, it would bring us to a grand total of $59. Now that´s cheap, considering how much we get out of it, but is it high school student cheap? That’s debatable. At least we have an idea of how much money we’re spending on the film.