What kind of paint to use?

[Patm]

I'm a complete newb when it comes to "art" painting and I don't know what kinds of paints work well with woods or MDF. I assume that regular house paint isn't the best choice (I'd imagine its too thick and fills in fine details).

What types of paints do you use?

[harryball]

What a can of worms you can open when talking about paints! I use acrylic artist paints for little detail stuff and over coat with clear acrylic. We use Sherwin Williams Duration paint for our bat houses, it holds up very well and is available nationwide so people can purchase paint for touch up etc... I've used it over cedar and MDF and it seems to hold up well. We try to stick to waterbased stuff or anything that will clean up with soap and water. The only exception is Shellac, we use a good bit of that for undercoating and sealing things.

[Thkoutsidthebox]

I use the acryliccs aswell. But often I buy 'Interior & Exterior' paints in the larger 2.5L cans and use them on detail stuff if I need the colour right now! The exterior paints are often oil based and a PITA to clean up. I suppose you could consider these 'Regular House Paints'? They work fine, but you do have to dilute them using either water or white spirits to get them to the correct consistancy for using with small brushes on artsy stuff. Its cheaper to buy in big tins, and diluting is something you'll have to get used to in order to learn to flow your paints anyway. I always use an undercoat and dont forget to sand between coats with 300 grit or higher paper. If your using MDF definately use an undercoat, you can buy tins of MDF primer, which I use, but some folks make their own MDF sealer out of white glue and (?water)...
Shellac is good as a sanding sealer before applying a varnish or similar, and gives a nice finish by itself, but again its a PITA to clean the brushes. I never used the De Waxed shellac although I do have some waiting for the right job, because I never had any problems with waxed shellac. And the de-waxed stuff is dearer. I agree generally try to stay with water based if you can, but you'll have to coat it in something else if its going outside, I usually coat in clear varnish, type dependant upon finish texture I want. Theres also a Clear Plastic paint product that I saw last week in a catalogue which you have to mix yourself, and I'm going to get some of that to try out for over coating at the end. It said that its not Photo sensitive for sunlight....hmmm...we'll see.
There are some good books available on wood finishing on amazon. One that I have and refer to a lot is 'The Complete Illustrated Guide To Finishing' by Jeff Jewitt.

[mrBOND]

After some hard work with my windows and doors, I tried the same technic on MDF.
Actually it was the first cut I did with VCP.. the Open Sample Sign.
I don't have a picture of the primary color on the Sign, so I also include my front door.
First I paint with a yellow primary color, then with a brown glazing paint.

[Patm]

Thanks for the tips and NICE DOOR! I wouldn't have thought of glazing over a paint that way (mechanical type here, never been artsy so it's hurting my brain!).

So your regular latex paints would work? I guess being waterbased adding water to thin it doesn't hurt anything. Waterborne Acrylic is readily available too at the home improvement/paint stores.

Guess I'll have to try the normal house painting methods on those projects where simple colouring is needed.

I'll look up that book too.