Some brands are better than others, but what it comes down to, is personal preference. The brands we listed below are reliable and reputable. Some are budget friendly some are not. We suggest if you are a beginner just starting out, then student grade is great and it wont break the bank to experiment with.

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Student Quality

Liquitex Basics Acrylic Colors

Basics is for all creatives. For all budgets. It’s perfect for all painting techniques including underpainting and sketching. This medium viscosity paint is made with lightfast, artist-quality pigments in an expanded choice of 72 colors.

Blick Studio Acrylics

A combination of price and performance makes Blick Studio Acrylics a great value for students and beginning artists.
Available in a palette of 60 bright, intense colors that mix well, Blick Studio Acrylic Colors are ideal for teaching color theory. Their high pigment concentration assures strong color power and covering power, and their buttery, oil paint-like texture holds impasto brush and palette marks when dry.
Unlike most student-grade paints, Blick Studio Acrylics contain pigments that have been mixed and then ground using a traditional steel three-roll mill. This process results in brighter colors, a consistent texture, and consistent colors from tube to tube.
Blick Studio Acrylics dry to a permanent, non-yellowing , lightfast paint film that is non-resoluble and flexible when dry. They are best used on non-oily surfaces, including paper, canvas, cardboard, wood, fabric, and more to create a wide variety of techniques and mixed-media applications.
Dilute Blick Studio Acrylics with Gloss Medium for washes on sealed surfaces such as gessoed canvas — and with water for even washes on absorbent surfaces such as paper.

Blickrylics

Blickrylic Student Acrylic Paint is a true acrylic paint, priced for the budget-minded. Because it’s so affordable, you can experiment more, or try your hand at something big!
Our extensive range of more than 30 rich colors, including fluorescents and metallics, makes this a very versatile paint for an unlimited range of projects. Brighten up your artwork on paper, canvas, wood, and cardboard. You can even use it on T-shirts when properly heat-set with an iron (Note: the finish may be a bit stiffer than with normal fabric paints).
Blickrylic is extremely pourable and non-toxic, making it ideal for classroom settings. It is mixable with other brands of acrylic paint, and dries quickly to a permanent, waterproof, semi-gloss finish.
Formulated with safety in mind, Blickrylic Student Acrylic contains no latex, dairy, casein, soy, egg, gluten, peanuts, or tree nuts. It is made in the USA.

Grumbach Academy Acrylics

Grumbacher’s Academy line is ideal for the art student, offering near professional quality at a uniform and affordable price. Unlike many of the so-called “budget” brands, Grumbacher uses genuine and pure pigments, such as pure cadmiums, to produce Academy Acrylics. Hues are carefully formulated to provide authentic tints, and just the right masstones, undertones, and mixtures. Colors are lightfast, consistent, opaque, and demonstrate strong adhesion. Because Academy Acrylics are subjected to the same tough quality standards as Grumbacher’s professional paints, colors are supremely consistent from batch to batch. This means that students can easily achieve the right color mixtures without frustration or waste. Individual tubes are available in 90 ml metal tubes, 75 ml plastic tubes or 200 ml plastic tubes.

Student Quality Paint Sets

Liquitex Basics Acrylic Sets

Liquitex Basics Acrylic Colors were developed for students and artists who require dependable quality at an economical price. Each color is uniquely formulated to bring out the maximum brilliance and clarity of the individual pigment.

Reeves Acrylic Painting Sets

Economical and ideal for junior high students through adult beginners. Versatile, easy-to-use paints are an excellent choice for color theory instruction and other educational uses.

Grumbacher Academy Acrylics Set

Artist Quality Acrylics

Golden Heavy Body Artists Acrylics

Golden Heavy Body Artist Acrylics are known for their exceptionally smooth, thick, and buttery consistency. They have the ability to “stand up” and retain brushstrokes or palette knife marks on the canvas.
The Golden Heavy Body line also contains the largest assortment of unique pure pigments in a 100% acrylic emulsion vehicle available to professional artists. There are no added fillers, extenders, opacifiers, toners, or dyes.
Each Golden Heavy Body Acrylic color is formulated differently depending on the nature of the pigment. Colors that tolerate higher pigment loads dry to a more opaque, matte finish, while colors that are more reactive and don’t accept high pigment loading dry to a glossy finish and tend to be more transparent. Since Heavy Body Acrylics are free from additives (such as matting agents) the gloss of each color will be different.
Golden Heavy Body Artist Acrylics are permanent and lightfast. A hand-painted color chart is available upon request.

Liquitex Heavy Body Artist

Liquitex Professional Heavy Body Acrylics are formulated to have a buttery smooth, thick consistency. A high pigment load produces rich, brilliant, permanent color and with good surface drag that provides excellent handling and blending characteristics with increased open working time.
When used for thick and impasto applications and techniques, Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylics retain crisp brushstrokes and knife marks that remain flexible when dry. Thick films remain free of cracks and chips over time. They are ideal for traditional techniques that employ brushes and painting knives, as well as experimental, mixed-media, collage, and printmaking applications.
Liquitex also offers seven Cadmium-Free Colors — finally, an alternative to cadmium colors that measures up! This innovative line delivers the same performance, vibrancy, and lightfastness as genuine cadmiums, but without the potential hazards. These paints were developed over a three-year period and underwent rigorous lab tests and artist trials to ensure they were truly equivalent. Cadmium-Free Heavy Body Acrylics are certified AP non-toxic.

Blick Artists Acrylic

Smooth, lightfast, and permanent, with excellent pigment quality, color strength, and longevity, Blick Artists’ Acrylics offer an exceptional combination of quality and value. Of the 70 colors in the line – including 25 new colors – 38 are made from a single pigment and the rest are blends – either to meet traditional hues or to create colors unique to Blick.
These high-viscosity acrylics are intermixable with other acrylics, and may be thinned with water or various mediums. From the jar or recyclable aluminum tube, both are equally thick and dry permanently insoluble. They’re suitable for any acrylic technique or for simulating oil paint effects.
Quality and value make Blick Artists’ Acrylics a beautiful choice for students, professionals, and aspiring artists alike!

Artist Quality Paint Sets

Golden Heavy Body Artist Set

The first acrylic colors offered by GOLDEN, Heavy Body paints are known for their exceptionally smooth, buttery consistency. The Heavy Body palette includes the largest assortment of unique pure pigments in a 100% acrylic emulsion available to professional artists. These colors offer excellent permanency and lightfastness. There are no fillers, extenders, opacifiers, toners, or dyes added.
Each Heavy Body color formula reflects the qualities of its pigment. Colors that tolerate a higher pigment load dry to a more opaque, matte finish. Colors that are more reactive and do not allow as much pigment loading tend to have a glossier, more transparent, finish. Because Heavy Body colors contain no matting agents, the gloss of each color will be different. 

Liquitex Heavy Body Artists Acrylics Paint Set

This is thick, high viscosity, pigment-rich professional acrylic color, ideal for impasto and texture.
With a high concentration of lightfast artist-quality pigment and a satin finish, Heavy Body Acrylic gives you rich, permanent color, with crisp brush strokes and knife marks.

Blick Artists Acrylic Set

Fluids

Liquitex Soft Body Paints

The paint you’ve previously known as Liquitex Medium Viscosity Acrylic Artist Color is now called Liquitex Professional Soft Body Acrylics.
Liquitex Professional Soft Body Acrylics were the first fine artist’s acrylics sold commercially in the United States. These concentrated acrylics contain rich, pure pigments that produce intense color without opacifiers or fillers. They have twice the covering power of ordinary craft acrylics!
Liquitex Soft Body Acrylics are naturally creamy and fluid. That makes them just right for tole and decorative arts, stenciling, murals, silk-screening, calligraphy, printmaking, graphic design, sculpture, photo retouching, hard edged painting, watercolor techniques, fabric painting without heat setting, airbrush illustration… you name it! They’re great for all surfaces, including wood, fabric, ceramics, canvas, or any porous surface.
Now, Soft Body Acrylics come in ergonomic squeeze bottles with nozzle tips. They were designed with artists to be easier to use and more functional without wasting paint.

Golden Fluid Acrylics

Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints are highly intense, permanent colors with a consistency similar to heavy cream. Produced from lightfast pigments, not dyes, they offer very strong colors with very thin consistencies, and contain no fillers or extenders. Golden Fluid Acrylics are ideal for spraying, brushing, staining, and pouring techniques.
Created for artists who want a low-viscosity, pigment-saturated paint, these paints contain high pigment levels suspended in an acrylic polymer vehicle. Unlike mixtures of heavy-bodied paints and water, they offer fine dispersion, high tinting strength, durability, flexibility, and good adhesion.
Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints have a similar formulation, pigment load, and color strength compared to Golden Heavy Body Artist Acrylics. Fluid Acrylics have greater leveling, and they load a brush more evenly than thicker paints, resulting in a consistent flow off the brush and longer, more uniform brush strokes.
To create heavier strokes, blend Fluid Acrylics with any Golden Gel Medium to thicken the paint to various extents. Because of the thin consistency and potency of Golden Fluid Acrylics, they are the easiest of all the paint systems to incorporate into powerful gel mixtures. These paints retain excellent flexibility when dry, greatly diminishing the likelihood of cracking that occurs in other natural and synthetic polymer systems. They can also absorb the constant stress and strain placed on canvas when shipped or as it expands and contracts with changes in temperature and humidity

For more information on reading paint labels and what to look for… check out Paint Types and Reading Labels