It's quite daunting going from drawing with pencil to ink and the same can be said for going from ink to full color acrylic. There's a few things to think about and this article is mainly written to help with materials to begin your journey.

1. A drawing board, you can purchase a sheet of plywood and some thin pieces of timber from your hardware store to construct one OR just purchase an easel:

2. A3 and above sized pre-primed stretched canvas.

3. Primers and mediums

White Gesso Primer (use this to prime your canvas again if you paint something you don't like the first time)
Mediums - Acrylic Retarder (not 100% necessary) but prevents the paint from drying too quickly on your palette and being wasted.

4. Brushes, Sizing is varied as it purely depends on the size of the canvas you're prepared to tackle, an important thing to note is that the brush bristles are on the shorter side so you will be able to control it. You need at least one synth flat brush for blending.

A flat decorators brush <- purchase this from any hardware store
Size 6-16 pointed brush
Size 6-16 flat synthetic brush
Size 3 or lower pointed brush for finer details like eyes, lips etc.

5. A basic lightfast acrylic set which includes the colors listed below, keep in mind to grab double the amount of blue and red as they will be used to mix other hues. Something to look at for is whether the colors are opaque or transparent, opaque is basically a stronger color so its more useful for blocking out other colors. Transparent colors are better for glazing. These techniques will be discussed in more detail in later articles.

Alizarin Crimson (optional but useful for mixing purples or just purchase a deeper purple)