Painting Mediums

In addition to the paint you will need to get some thinners and also a bottle of painting medium. There are so many options with regard to painting medium but to start off with you can just chose to use linseed oil and as you go on and experiment more try different types of medium and how they affect the paint and help or hinder with your style of painting.
Brushes
So, then you will need some brushes. These also come in so many different types and sizes. It may well depend on what style of painting you are planning to do as to what brushes you need. For example if you are going to paint realistically in fine detail you may want smaller round brushes but if you are going to paint big abstract blended paintings then go for big softer flat brushes. I may be contentious in advising this but when you are just starting out, especially if you are just going to be testing out various techniques I would advise getting some cheap brushes to see what kind of shape and size you prefer to use. The main problems with cheaper brushes in my opinion are that firstly, some of the hairs may come out whilst you are painting and secondly, the brushes may not retain their shape as well. Advantages are that you don't buy expensive brushes that you subsequently decide are not the right type for you. Once you have decided your painting style and which brushes are suitable for that you can then buy the more expensive ones. For me, as an abstract artist, I also prefer the much softer (and for some reason cheaper) big brushes that blend the paint really nicely and don't leave so many brush strokes. I will use the brush firstly on a test painting and that will generally get rid of any of the lose hairs so hardly any will come off on my actual painting.