Specific art supplies are necessary to complete the class. We’ll use the same tools each week, so you’ll get good use out of them. While beautiful art can be made using anything, you’ll need more than your grandfather’s wooden ruler and a mechanical pencil to get through this class. I’ve listed specific links to my favorite, cost effective supplies which you’ll need for this class.
- Buy all products online via DickBlick Art Supply, Amazon, or another online art supply house. We’ve provided DickBlick and Amazon links below.
1. 24″ Metal Ruler
You’ll find that you need quite a long ruler for this class for all the orthogonal sketches (you’ll learn what that word means soon!). Make sure the one you get is 24” long.
- Blick Stainless Steel Ruler – 24″, cork backer (DickBlick)
- Westport Stainless Steel Ruler – 24″ (Amazon)
2. Drawing Pencils
Like I said, while beautiful art can be made using any sort of pencil, for this class I want you all to begin to learn the different pencil densities and abilities. This set of six pencils should be plenty for what we’re covering in this class, but there are large ranges of types of graphite pencils you can get, ranging from quite hard to extremely soft densities. This set comes with a pencil sharpener, too!
- Drawing Pencils – Faber-Castell Goldfaber Sketching Pencil Set (DickBlick)
- Drawing Pencils – Faber-Castell (Amazon)
3. Kneadable Eraser
Yay! Kneadable erasers are so fun! These are super helpful to erase those fine detail areas and for lightening lines without completely erasing them. They’re also fun to play with.
- Kneadable Eraser – Faber-Castell (DickBlick)
- Kneadable Eraser – Faber-Castell (Amazon)
4. 18×24″ Drawing Pad
This will be your large drawing pad to use for each of our projects and for some of our exercises that take up lots of paper space.
- 18×24″ Drawing Pad – Strathmore 400 Series (DickBlick)
- 18×24″ Drawing Pad – Strathmore 400 Series (Amazon)
5. 11×14″ Sketchpad
We’ll use this sketchpad for some of your exercises that are to help build muscle memory, and so don’t need to be huge drawings. We’ll also use this to make quick sketches to prepare for our big projects. If you already have a sketchbook around this size that you like, feel free to use it! I always hate having to buy a new sketchbook when I have a perfectly good blank one already. However, I wouldn’t use one smaller than 9×12”.
- 11×14″ Sketchpad – Canson Universal (DickBlick)
- 11×14″ Sketchpad – Canson Universal (Amazon)
6. Blending Stumps
These are specially rolled paper stumps used for blending and shading. These are so fun! There are loads of different sizes you can eventually explore, but for this class we’ll just start with these.
- Blending Stumps – 1/4″, Pkg of 2 (DickBlick)
- Blending Stumps – Staedtler, 1/4″ (Amazon)