Weekend Creativity Series: Essential Art Supplies

by cgrotke | Creative | 1639 Views

Everyone has their own favorite tools, and for artists this means art supplies. We have a room dedicated, filled with all sorts of goodies.

I’m rather simple in my essentials. I exclusively use whatever is available. If I get a choice in the matter, I’m drawn to soft pencils and black sharpies, and small sheets of paper. For animation I get out my Color-erase blue pencil and work with punched paper.

But that’s just for drawing. I also like to have easy access to rulers, flexible curves, colored paper, scissors, exacto knives, tape, a range of glues, wood, metal, glass, clay, fabrics, cameras, instruments, and reference books and videos.

Everyone is different, and we all approach the topic of tools and studio space in different ways. Here’s just one artist discussing her sketchbooks, paper, ink, pens, and pencils.

And, here’s a tour of an art studio of someone that does mixed media.

Comments | 5

  • Submitted by annikee on April 17, 2016 at 11:28 am

    It depends

    Whole years go by when I don’t pick up a lump of clay or piece of fabric. I almost always have paper and pencils and drawing pens nearby, so I guess they are the essentials to me. But it’s cool to have other stuff for when the inclination strikes.

    • Submitted by cgrotke on April 18, 2016 at 6:43 am

      hoarding

      I’m closest to being a hoarder when it comes to art supplies. Almost anything “might” be useful someday, and it is hard to get rid of scraps, nubs, doo-dads, note-pads, remnants, and so on.

      What if I need a piece of styrofoam? This weird piece of metal might come in handy someday, right? The art studio is the the home recycling center.

      About the best I do is go through every once in a while and test the old markers to make sure they aren’t dry, and to see if tubes of anything have dried out. Those things I can throw out.

      • Submitted by annikee on April 18, 2016 at 5:56 pm

        old and dried up

        I do have a box of old stuff here somewhere. The remnants of the last oils, the nonstandard watercolor colors, bits of things I won’t give up. Don’t have the room to hoard, and I’ve lost 3 portfolios so there’s not a lot to hoard anyway. I should go thru that stuff. The oils must be crap, at the least. The Craypas in there must be 35 years old.

        • Submitted by cgrotke on April 19, 2016 at 6:31 am

          An art project

          That gives me an idea.

          Everything likes to be appreciated and useful. Maybe we should someday do some sort of project using up all excess materials? Get them all out and try some multimedia effort.

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