A Pile of Questions! (#2 - Art Materials)

One of the lovely students I met while visiting my old high school has sent me a whole load of wonderful questions to answer here on the blog. I'll be slowly working my way through each of her questions over the next few weeks. I'll be tackling them in a somewhat random order, as I'd like to hunt down a few good resources for answering some of the more complex questions.

Q: "What are the top brands to use (pencils, pens, markers, papers, paints, etc.)? [...] What are the best tablets (in terms of cost, usability, features and outcome of art) to use for digital art? Where can you buy these materials?"



What makes a brand of art materials good to use is somewhat debatable. Most often, the highly favored brands among artists are also the most expensive. However, there's nothing wrong with using the cheap brand of any material, as long as you, personally, get the result you want out of it.

I can tell you what brands are commonly favored, and which ones I personally prefer.


Pencils (graphite and colored) - Prismacolor, General's, and Faber-Castell are some of the high quality (and expensive) pencils out there. These are all definitely good brands. Though when it comes to graphite pencils, I find the brand doesn't matter so much. The biggest difference between pencils is the hardness or softness of the lead, and any halfway decent brand will provide a wide variety. Just make sure you use a softer lead when you want to draw dark, and a harder lead when you want to draw light.

Reference chart for lead hardness

You can be a little more picky about colored pencils. Crayola really won't cut it if you're looking for real art pencils, but just about any brand sold in an art store alongside Prismacolor and Faber-Castell will do the trick. My personal favorite is Koh-i-Noor's woodless colored pencils. They're much cheaper than Prismacolors, and the color quality is excellent. I also tend to favor woodless pencils (colored or graphite) because you're getting more for your money, you don't have to sharpen as often, and your lead is much less likely to break.

Koh-i-Noor's 24 set of woodless colored pencils

Pens - The most popular brands of pen are Micron and Faber-Castell. I actually agree with what's popular in this case. Microns are my favorite for fine detail inking because they come in a wide variety of sizes. I've had a few negative experiences with the flat-tip Faber-Castells, but their brush pens are excellent for loose sketching or dynamic inking (thick-to-thin lines).

My full set of black inking pens. Faber-Castell also comes in grays and a wide range of colors.

Markers - It's hard to go wrong with Prismacolor's markers, but Chartpak works well for simple shading or coloring as well. Copic is a brand that's often recommended, but I actually haven't tried Copic markers because they're so terribly expensive. I would only recommend buying them if you're really serious about working with markers.

Prismacolor's grayscale markers are excellent for shading. They blend smoothly and come in a full value scale.

Papers - Paper is one material where I find artists can be very divided over what they like. For this, I have to recommend trying a variety and seeing what works best for you. Canson is a popular brand, and very good quality, though I'm not a fan of their textures. Personally, my favorite paper to use is Strathmore sketchbook paper. It has enough tooth to pick up graphite, but it's smooth enough to ink on. Another favorite, for inking in particular, is Beinfang's Graphics 360 paper.

Paints - I have to admit, I don't know as much about paints as I should. I often stick to pencil and pen, and turn to digital mediums if I have a need for color. Windsor & Newton is the only professional brand I have experience with. It's a good quality, but pretty expensive. The only hard advice I can give to to avoid "kiddy" brands that are often used in grade school art rooms. These are the paints that are sold in big jugs or bulk sets and only label their colors simple "yellow," "blue," etc. These aren't unusable, but they will be very difficult to get a professional piece of artwork out of.

Professional-quality paints come in smaller tubes and use very precise pigments for their colors. 

Tablets - If you want a good tablet, you have to be willing to spend some money. Wacom is pretty much the go-to brand for tablets, but they offer a variety of quality. Their Bamboo tablets will do the job for very simple artwork, but can severely limit you when you wish to do something more professional. Intuos is the favored line of Wacoms, because they have pressure and tilt sensitivity, and shortcut buttons on the side of the tablet. The current version is Intuos 5, but I still use my 8-year-old Intuos 3, and wouldn't trade it in for the world. It doesn't hurt to use old versions.

My very loved Intuos 3. Not looking too bad for its age.

The current Intuos 5 for comparison. A much sleeker design, but does basically the same things as the old Intuos 3.

Wacom also sells the Cintiq, wich is basically a computer monitor that you can draw directly onto with the tablet pen. As wonderful at they are, these are QUITE expensive, so I don't recommend buying one unless you're working as an artist professionally.

Beautiful, innit? This thing is every digital artist's dream, but the price tag is a true reality check.

Where to buy - You can find all of your traditional (non-digital) materials at any decent art store. My school heavily supports Utrecht, but I recommend Blick or Daniel Smith. Utrecht's store brand is poor quality and they inflate their prices to an insane degree. (They once sold reams of animation paper for $80, while you could buy the exact same paper direct from the makers for less than $20)

Tablets are usually best bought directly from the company's site, though you may find better prices at some online retailers. Where you order it doesn't matter so much as long as it's from a reliable seller. Do some research.


If you want to know about any other materials or have extra questions, please ask in the comments!