Liquitex BASICS 6-Color Acrylic Set: Make Room for Mixing

Six tubes can be a deliberate palette rather than a small version of a much larger paint collection. The Liquitex BASICS Acrylic Starter Set combines Primary Red, Primary Blue, Primary Yellow, Phthalocyanine Green, Titanium White and Mars Black. Its appeal is having paint for repeated mixing, with 118 ml in each tube.

Consider it for acrylic studies, preliminary color ideas and underpainting. You get a limited starting group with substantial individual tubes, rather than dozens of ready-made hues. The buying decision is whether you want to build the colors on your palette yourself.

Choose six starting colors, then make the mixtures

The three named primaries sit alongside a separate green, white and black. That gives you a clear inventory to work from before adding another tube. The set does not promise every possible hue or replace a specific pigment you already need for a particular painting.

For an object study, make a few small mixtures before covering the main surface. Keep notes about which tubes went into them, particularly if you want to return to the same idea in another session. Treat the first attempt as a way to establish your own working palette, not as a recipe for a predetermined result.

This approach suits someone who enjoys making decisions between the tube and the brush. If you mainly want to select a ready-made color and keep moving, a wider assortment may fit that habit better. More paint in each of six colors is useful only when those colors belong in the work.

Understand the paint before choosing a technique

Liquitex describes regular BASICS as a student-quality acrylic with medium viscosity and a satin finish. It is distinct from BASICS Acrylic Fluid and from the brand's professional ranges. Choose the consistency you intend to use, rather than expecting all products with the same brand name to handle identically.

The manufacturer lists sketching, underpainting, color mixing and mixed-media work among its uses. An initial color study can therefore have a purpose beyond filling a practice page: it lets you decide which mixtures and shapes belong in a later painting.

Opacity also varies by color. Read the tube's opacity indication before deciding how much of an earlier mark you want to cover. A transparent color and an opaque one make different contributions to a layered passage; the set name does not make every tube equally covering.

Plan for the change from wet paint to dry film

Acrylic paint is water-based while wet, but it forms a water-resistant film as it dries. Do not plan to revive a dried palette in the same way you would reactivate a watercolor pan. Squeeze out an amount appropriate to the part of the painting you are ready to tackle.

Leave space for a mixing area and a spare test surface. Looking at a dried sample before choosing an important final mixture is useful because Liquitex explains that acrylic colors can shift in value as the binder becomes clear during drying. That is a reason to make a sample, not a promise of one fixed change across all six colors.

These are paint tubes rather than a complete painting station. Brushes, a suitable support and any additional medium required by your chosen technique need their own place in the setup. The six-color package does not include a brush kit or prepared canvas.

Make cleanup part of the painting session

The 118 ml size makes sense if you will revisit these colors, but repeated use also means closing and storing the tubes properly. Liquitex advises keeping lids tight and the screw threads clean. Deal with paint around the opening before it makes the next session unnecessarily awkward.

For cleanup, the manufacturer's guidance is to wipe paint from tools before it dries, collect paint waste rather than wash leftover paint down the sink, and then wash the tools. Check local arrangements for disposing of collected paint waste.

Choose this set when mixing a modest palette is part of what you want to do with acrylics. It provides six defined starting colors in useful tube sizes, without making the decisions about mixtures, paper or canvas, drying and cleanup for you. Buy a different format if a larger ready-made color selection or a more fluid consistency matters more.