Material Picks and Suggestions. Find out what you need to get started!

Basic Painting and Drawing material lists to get you started.

Drawing supplies.

Sketch pad, coil-bound or hard cover. Not too small – Give yourself room!

Graphite pencils or sticks – HB, 2B, 5B is all you need to start.

Vine Charcoal, also called Willow Charcoal – This is a very forgiving medium, easily erased and over worked. Great for shading.

Kneadable eraser – These work beautifully with vine charcoal, a few strokes will pull most of your charcoal off the page. The Eraser cleans itself and your fingers as you knead it.

Want a more in-depth Beginner Drawing Kit?

Try  the beginner lesson, Geometric Shape Shading. This Video lesson is included in the Beginner Drawing Kit.

Acrylic painting supplies

Canvases – You can use small canvas boards or stretched canvases, the choice is yours. Stretched canvases tend to be a little smoother if you prefer.

Brushes – I like flat, synthetic ones to give me more control of paint application. Get several ranging from 1 inch down to 1/4 inch and maybe one or two smaller round brushes for the fine details.

Palette – There are many types of palettes available, you can spend a lot or nothing. Sealed palettes with a sponge bottom and a lid work great for keeping your acrylics from drying out. You can also use disposable palettes or simply an ice cream container lid, though with these, you will have to continuously spray your paint to keep it from drying out.

Paint – I recommend passing by the tiny tubes that are available, they are inexpensive but you will use them up on only one or two paintings. Small tubs are a good value for the amount you get, or mid-sized tubes. You can get by with about five tubes and save yourself some money. See colour blending and choices page for details.

Easels are helpful but not a must, you can work on a table and prop your painting up with something. If you do get one, try a table top easel to start.

Spray bottle if you need for palette.

Containers and rags for cleaning brushes.

Oil painting supplies

The only difference for oil painting supplies is that the paint is oil based and needs an odorless mineral spirits for clean-up.

Choose your oil paint the same way as acrylics. See Choosing your paint colours on the colour blending page.

I recommend Eco-house paint thinner. It is citrus based and non-toxic, but acts just like odorless mineral spirits and works very well. So if you are worried about ventilation, it will work for you.

All other supplies are the same except that your containers should be glass or tin, wide-mouthed mason jars work well because you can seal them to keep your thinner from evaporating. Use two so you can pour off the clean thinner, use it and then pour it back into the other one. The paint will settle in the bottom and leave the top clear again for reuse.

Studio Session Class Supplies:

For those registered or interested in a Studio Class Session, please see Recommendations for Studio Class Supply Kit

Tips and Instruction for Painting Techniques:

Follow theses links for helpful tips and instructions on Acrylic and Oil painting techniques.

Dry-brush over Staining Painting Transparent Glass Brushwork Examples The Art of Underpainting Magpie Painting Photo Lesson

Paint Brush Lore Try a Two-tone Value Study The Value in a Grey Scale Editing Your Source The Art of Lost Edges

 

My Favorite Materials

Drawing materials:

Graphite pencil can be very satisfying to work with on a good quality paper with subtle tooth (texture). Using a few pencils, starting with the harder ones working up to softer.

Vine Charcoal, also known as Willow Charcoal, is a favorite drawing material of mine. It is extremely flexible and easy to erase, though not as dark as pressed charcoal. Its only down side comes from the charm of its flexibility, it can be rubbed off the paper very easily during transport. To preserve drawings they must be framed. I do not use spray fixative because it will yellow over time upon a drawing.

Schmincke Chalk Pastel is my favorite pastel. It is smooth and spreads upon the page like butter. Coverage of lighter colour over dark is superior to that of harder pastels. There are wide variations in the quality of chalks and as with most materials the greater the cost, often the greater the quality. Rembrandt is also very good, just slightly harder, and then Grumbacher makes a good pastel as well.

Paper for Graphite Work:

Stonehenge is traditionally a printmaking paper, but is often used for drawing. It is one of my favorites and allows for a beautiful range of value when working in graphite.

Sketchbooks are a must for me. I prefer a hardbound sketchbook that will stand up to being carted around and slid in and out bags and backpacks. My sketchbooks are like visual diaries of my travels and adventures so it is nice to have a lasting book. When I am working on commission drawings for a client, I use coil bound books so the drawings can be easily torn out and given to the client as part of the commission process.

Paper for Chalk Pastel:

Canson makes a very nice chalk pastel paper and the range of colour is very satisfying to work chalk upon.

Suede Mat Board is also a lovely surface to draw on with chalk. The nap of the surface texture holds the chalk beautifully with less dusting off. This option is a good deal more expensive then paper, but the stiffness of the surface makes it easier to handle finished work.

Oil Paint:

Rembrandt makes a lovely oil paint but it is expensive and often hard to come by. As with chalk, paint will vary in quality, in opacity and how finely ground the pigment is.

I also use Gamblin and Georgian; the former is a little more transparent which I enjoy. It allows the white of the canvas or an underpainting colour to show through the paint a little more, giving more luminosity to paintings.

 

Canvas and Stretchers

I use to have stretchers made for me and then stretched my own canvases, but now there are lovely gallery style canvases available that are sturdy and well braced to avoid warping. They are also deep enough so that I can paint around the edge and do not always need a frame. There are even some that have three and four inch depth which brings small paintings into the sculptural realm, they can be stood up on their own on a shelf or mantle.

I often work on a hard board, gessoed masonite or a high density hardboard allows for a nice smooth texture for paint to spread out on. It has a different look to the finished work than canvas.

Clay

Roma Plastilina is the clay that I use to sculpt with. It is oil based so it will never dry out or crack with shrinkage. It has a sulfur smell but is beautiful to work with and holds its detail for molding and casting in bronze. There are several hardness numbers; I prefer the softest so that my hands don’t get too sore kneading the clay before it is applied to a sculpture.

Wax can also be used to sculpt with.

Easy Drawing Exercises

Colour Blending

Glossary of Art Terms