Tips on What Art Supplies to Use

Below are a list of a few of my personal must haves when I create a piece.

  1. Black Staedtler triplus fineliner : 0.3 mm (I’d recommend getting the whole pack of 10 colours of these fineliners. They’re incredible.)
  2. Papermate Flair Medium (for thicker black lines. Although any slightly thick black pen will do.)
  3. Staedtler metallic marker : silver and gold 1-2 mm. (My latest love of life. They’re absolutely incredible.)
  4. Matador Hi-school ball point black pens 0.5 mm. (This is what I use to draw ALL my work. They are my life.)
  5. Jellyroll 08 Sakura White pen (This is great for highlighting when I work on my custom journals)
  6. Faber Castell 2B Pencil. (Generally, any 2B pencil will give you great control for rough sketching as it does for me. It is just the right amount of dark and soft to be able to easily rub out once you’ve made your cleaner lines. The ‘B’ in pencils stand for their blackness. So a 4B pencil is darker and softer than a 2B pencil. I’m not a very big fan of sketching in pencil and so I don’t ever use my sketching pencils at a higher degree than a 2B.)
  7. Colouring pencils – I use a mix between my Faber Castell and Staedtler collection. They’re both great. (It’s really important to get a good set of colouring pencils. A cheap set of colouring pencils could really make the difference between a good piece of art and a mediocre piece of art.)
  8. Sketchbook : 140/150 gsm sketchbook. (It is so important to make sure you’re working on paper that is good and rich in quality. Bad quality paper can severely affect your art. It’ll make the colours from colour pencils look grainy and faint if you use the wrong quality paper. I recommend a minimum of 140 gsm when buying your sketchbooks. They’re a little expensive but they’re always better quality. Also make sure you buy a sketchbook to cater to your art style. Watercolour based artwork will generally need stronger paper than simple pencil sketching.)

What art supplies you chose to use is often very specific to you. If you’re a painter for example, your choice of art supplies will be a lot different to someone who doesn’t so much look at anything else apart from charcoal. Alike a lot of the entire process of finding your own niche in art, learning to pick the right art supplies for you also comes with a lot of trial and error.

I realised very early on in my love for art that I wasn’t very much of a painter.

“I also realised that I love definition in my drawings. I’m not one of those people that can make a drawing look good by using just 1 colour. I like solid black lines in my drawings. This has led me to invest in a range of black pens and markers for my art.”

I also mainly draw people which means I’ve had to make sure I always have access to a range of skin toned colour pencils.

It’s the little things that have slowly made me understand what supplies I work with best.

In terms of the cost, a lot of the pens are supplies I use can all be purchase under £5-10 collectively. I don’t go out of my way to buy really expensive supplies. A lot of the supplies I now love using came down to a matter of trial and error. I bought a few things and tried them out and stuck with the ones I liked the best. The only thing I’d recommend spending a little extra on would be a good set of colour pencils and a good quality sketchbook.

If you have any more questions about what things I use, leave them in the comments below.

10 Comments

  1. I’m getting new supplies soon so this post is very useful to me, might buy no. 3 and 4 🙂

  2. Thanks for the tips! Going to grab this stuff this week actually (I have to take drawing class in uni)

  4. This was really helpful thank you so much! Your page is amazing and I love how you share tips and what you’ve done to become as great of an artist as you are! Xox

  5. Seeing as a lot of this art supplies isn’t exactly in my budget, what cheaper supplies could be used as replacements? I love your page! Xox ?

    1. A lot of the pens are supplies I use can all be purchase under £5 collectively. I don’t go out of my way to buy really expensive supplies. A lot of the supplies I now love using came down to a matter of trial and error. I bought a few things and tried them out and stuck with the ones I liked the best. The only thing I’d recommend spending a little extra on would be a good set of colour pencils and a good quality sketchbook. High quality paper is really important!
      I hope this helps.

  6. I’ve been wanting to get my mom some art supplies, but I haven’t known what the best options would be. Thanks for sharing your tips on what works for you, because now I know where to start. My mom will thank you as well because she’ll have supplies that work!

    1. Wow! Thank you so much! I’m glad you found the post useful! My website is still in the works before I officially launch it! I can’t believe you found this post! x

  7. This post was so helpful. It’s really good how you pointed out the need of buying supplies according to what art medium you’re used to using! Also you don’t even need super expensive art supplies to make ur art look good.. If you’re a good artist you can make anything look amazing! – G x

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