First decide what is your passion to paint. Do you like Oils, Acrylics and or water colors or the other types out there that are similar to these mediums. Water color is very fluid but the modern style is wonderful to see and can be very real looking.
Acrylics the normal ones dry very fast so need a special palette called stay wet to keep them wet. But there are new formulas that act a bit like oils. They can be reopened and painted more to blend more.
Interactive is the Original brand name of the paint now there are more brands out there. Some even have brands that the color shift they are known for is does not happen. Oils is my favorite.
There are two types here. One works with water and the standard oils with solvents are used. I use baby oil instead of solvents to clean the brushes.
Murphy's oil soap is good too. So you need to pick a style you want to learn and either find a teacher or get DVDs from a teacher you like and self teach. After you do that for a while you can pick up books for the cheap on Amazon and go from there.
Some teachers and DVDs are not that good so you go for someone whose work you seen yourself and like. So you judge the artist work first before one learns from them. Spend only as much as you wish to as it is so easy to keep buying stuff.
I am starting to use Masonite to paint on for oils and Acrylics. Also buy the best and the cheap stuff will give crappy results. A good brush behaves as it should and a bad one does not.
The same with the paints. Crappy oil paint is like painting with baby oil and runs.
Well it depends on what kinda of art your doing because I do digital art using photoshop if your looking into starting that then youtube has alot of great videos on the subject.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.