Starting Art? Get These Essential Supplies!

If you’re thinking about learning to draw, but haven’t quite found the right moment to start, one of the things that you might be thinking about is what kind of art supplies you need to begin. If you’re farther along in your art progress, maybe you’re not sure what to recommend to beginners. Don’t worry. I got ya.

Even if you’re aiming for digital, you also probably want to think about the traditional art supplies that you should have. That’s where it’s really most productive to learn. Even if you have a really easy to use drawing tablet, nothing really beats learning with traditional. Plus, your skills will translate across digital and traditional easily. I have a previous video on this subject that you can watch if you’re unsure why.

When you’re starting out, you might hear advice from artists that say, “Just use what you have. Use pencil and paper. That’s all you need.” Hey, I’ve said this a couple times. While that is true, I’ve found that it can be more useful to get specific advice on the things that you should use or buy. Similar to getting started drawing, if someone were to just tell you, “Just draw. Go draw anything. Draw whatever.” That sounds cool and all, but it doesn’t really help you figure out what skills you should be practicing, and having a little guidance there can be useful. I think the same applies to drawing supplies. If you’re getting specific instructions on what to practice, it can be useful to get specific instructions on what kind of supplies to have.

Now, importantly: if you have supplies that you like already, there’s nothing wrong with continuing to use those. If you’re not sure, this video should help. A fair amount of you won’t find this list too surprising, and that’s perfectly OK. But hopefully it will be a useful list of recommendations that you can send to your friends who want to get into art. After supplies that you already have, consider checking out your local art shop first, as they’ll probably have most of the good stuff picked out. Then check out some online stores for anything you didn’t find. I’ll include some links on a resources page in the description too.

I’ve got a few videos lined up for this. This first one is talking about the essentials. Then we’ll talk about some of the non-essentials: things that are fun yet aren’t that expensive. And in one more, we’ll talk about some books that I like to keep on hand! Let’s go ahead and jump in.

We’re going to start out by talking about paper. Now if you’ve got a stack of plain printer paper around, hey that’s totally fine. But if you’re not really happy with that, then there are a couple options that I recommend. One of them is something called smooth newsprint. This is a pretty cheap kind of paper, and as the name hints, it’s used for making newspaper. Smooth newsprint is a specific kind that has a smoother finish than a traditional newspaper though. I’ve made the mistake of buying rough newsprint before; it doesn’t feel great to draw on. Stick with smooth. Typically, you’ll find this at art shops sold on a roll or in giant sketchpad size. The roll is usually the cheaper option, and you can always unroll whatever size paper you need, cut it, and start drawing.

The other kind of paper that you’re probably thinking about is a sketchbook. Don’t go fancy here. Truly. I’ve spoken about this a lot. Having a fancy sketchbook will just make you not want to draw on it because you’ll feel like your drawings aren’t worth the good sketchbook. Get something cheap. As it turns out, two of my favorite brands of sketchbooks are rather inexpensive, and yet still pretty nice. The first one that I really like is by Strathmore, and it’s a basic sketch pad. I like to use one that’s slightly larger than the size of your typical A4 or US letter size, like a 9x12", just because it’s a little bit bigger and yet not too big. This pad is nice because it’s plain paper, but it’s still thick enough to not worry about ripping it if you’re erasing something. There are other variants of this one with tan and gray tones and thicker pages, but you probably don’t need those. Stick with the cheap one. Another popular brand here is Canson. They also have a sketchpad of the same size and price as Strathmore and basically the same quality. Whatever art shop I’m in, I will look for either of these two brands and I will be pretty happy with what I find. At least in the US, these are the easiest ones to find in most art stores and the ones that are going to give you the most consistent kind of sketchpad. There are other brands out there and they’re probably good too; just check the reviews.

All right, so that’s your paper to draw on. What are you going to draw with? Let’s talk pencils. Graphite pencils are the standard here, in varying kinds of hardnesses. The hardness of a pencil determines how dark your marks are and how “thick” vs precise they appear, which is useful if you are wanting to shade things a lot. But if you’re just wanting to learn to draw, a simple “HB” pencil will do – that’s the standard hardness. If you’re in the US, this is actually the same thing as your standard #2 pencil. Use whatever brand you like. These have been around forever and it’s hard to find a bad #2 pencil. If you want a specific brand of art pencil, Faber-Castell tends to make some good ones in varying hardness. But usually HB is good enough; if you also want to try a softer kind for darker marks, I’ve enjoyed 4B as well.

Don’t forget that if you’re getting traditional pencils, you will need some kind of pencil sharpener. You can use anything for this. You don’t need an “art” pencil sharpener. You could even use one of those pencil sharpeners that you would find in a typical classroom. However, if you’re like me, you might think that needing to sharpen a pencil and having it shrink down in size as you use it can get a little annoying.

Which leads us to mechanical pencils. But… the lead in those is bit too thin to draw with. So what’s an artist to do? Hello lead holder. Lead holder is a fancy way of saying fat mechanical pencil. The lead is about as thick as your traditional graphite pencil, but it’s in a form that you can hold and use like a mechanical pencil. You can find lead refills pretty cheaply and in different hardnesses, just like plain graphite pencils. The thick lead means that you do have to sharpen it a little bit. The device that you use to sharpen the lead of a lead holder is called a lead pointer. And there are a few inexpensive options that I will link in the resources.

Pencils, paper, cool. What about pens? So I don’t think that the usual ballpoint pens you might own are that great for drawing. The ink can be really inconsistent and you can’t usually get a clean line out of them when you need to. There are some art focused pens out there that are significantly better at that, so if you use those, cool. But if you want a general pen-like thing, consider looking at something called a fineliner. A fineliner is basically a precision marker made for art. You’ll find them in sizes similar to ballpoint pens. And their key appeal is that they will often make a consistent line all the way until they run out of ink and then they don’t work – there’s no gradual fade-out. And they usually last quite a while too. These are pretty popular at art stores; I recommend going into a store in person to try some out. Almost every art shop you visit will have a sample area where you can try out pens before you buy them to be sure that they haven’t dried out and that you like them. Some that I really like are made by Staedtler. They are a set of pigment liners made in varying widths. I like the 0.5 width a lot. But realistically, you can use whatever you prefer.

Finally, let’s talk about erasers. Don’t buy just any eraser, but you don’t have to be super expensive in your shopping either. You can find some reliable brands at your local art shop, or by searching online for “art eraser” pretty easily. There’s a couple categories of art erasers out there: One are plastic erasers, sometimes also known as vinyl or rubber erasers. And these are the ones you’re probably familiar with. They work by rubbing against the page and their abrasive surface will pick up graphite as they shed their own material. These are the kind that I most often find myself using, even if there’s a risk of ripping the paper.

The other kind are called kneadable erasers. If you haven’t looked at art supplies before, you might not know about these ones, but they tend to be pretty popular. Kneadable erasers, or gummy erasers, are used by rolling them around in your hand, making a small point or edge of whatever size you want, and gently tapping or rubbing against the page to pick the graphite up. These erasers have a tacky feel to them that allows them to absorb these kinds of materials. Over time they will start to get dark with all of the graphite and slowly become less effective. But they actually do last quite a long time. Personally, I don’t use these that much, but I have friends that swear by them, and hey. Using kneadable erasers is just as fine as using a rubber eraser. Both are inexpensive.

The next time we talk about art supplies, I’ll go into some of the more adventurous and fun supplies that I personally like, but as far as drawing, what I’ve just shown is all you need for a very long time. By the time you run out of some good pencils and paper, you can consider trying some fancier stuff. For now, keep to the simple things and go have some fun drawing.