Hi Halltribe

Congratulations on getting into acrylics. Have you done much painting before? I find that acrylics are a lot more fun than watercolours or oils.

If you're just starting out, any paint that says "student acrylic" rather than "artist acrylic" would be good to buy, as they are a lot cheaper and I think that the quality is usually pretty good. Not sure about specific brands, but if you go into a shop the salesperson should be able to help you.

With acrylics you don't need a sealer over the picture when its finished as the paint should dry hard. Re blending and overlapping colours, acrylics are great because you don't need to stick to a rule like "lightest to darkest" or "darkest to lightest" as you would with watercolours or oils. I.e. you can paint any colour over any colour once the previous layer is dry, and you can do as many layers as you want. If you don't wait for it to dry before painting over it though, the colours could become "muddy", so it is best to wait. For blending colours it is best to do it separately on a pallete, rather than on the canvas itself (although some people like to mix on the canvas, it depends what you're into).

I'm not sure why your paint would have cracked. I have had this happen on occasion too and think that it might be because I didn't mix the paint properly and some air bubbles got caught in it, but I'm not sure...

Yes, using a brush is a lot different than a pencil. The best thing to do is to experiment and have fun. And the good thing about acrylics is that if you stuff it up, you can just paint over it and start again.

Hmmm, am inspired to go and paint now. Pity it is bed time.