10 Essential Art Supplies for Every Artist in the Making

Want to get creative but don’t know where to start? How about gathering your tools first? This article will be all about the essential art supplies every artist needs, regardless of expertise. Continue reading to know more about it!

If you have a child who is passionate about art and creating something, it’s highly recommended and encouraged to support and nurture their creativity. Providing them with the things to let their inner creativity out will hugely impact their growth, both emotionally and mentally.

If you yourself are looking for these essential art materials, you’ve still come to the right place. Having the right tools will help bring out your artistic side so to get started, we’ve gathered the 10 essential art supplies that every artist in the making needs.

(Some links are affiliate links which means we earn a small commission if you purchase at no additional cost to you.)

Table of Contents

10 Essential Art Supplies for Every Artist in the Making

Where to Buy Art Supplies

Other Helpful Supplies for Artists

Final Thoughts

10 Essential Art Supplies for Every Artist in the Making

Graphite Pencils

Pencils. This is the most basic tool that every artist should have in their arsenal. Even if you’re just into painting, you’ll need to use a pencil to outline and draw your subject before filling your paper with paint. And you don’t need to have a whole set of pencils (unless you’re into sketching so that’s another topic to be discussed), you only have to have 3 pencils at most, even one would suffice. A 2B pencil is great for sketching and shading, a 6B for dark shading, and a 4H for light shading.

Find a brand that will suit your needs. Here are some of what we recommend:

1. Faber-Castell Creative Studio Graphite Sketch Pencils 
2. Staedtler Mars Lumograph 2B Graphite Art Drawing Pencil 
3. General’s Charcoal Pencil Kit 

Pens

If you are a “pen” person, make sure to have a variety of them in your art supplies. There are a lot of pen brands with really great quality. Pens are great for lettering, outlining, and adding fine details to your work. With so many brands to choose from, here are our favorites:

1. Sakura Micron Pens 
2. Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pens 
3. Uni-Pin Fineliner Drawing Pens 
4. Molotow Blackliner Pens 

Erasers

Another essential art supplies you’ll need are erasers. You’ll need both a kneaded and a white eraser. Kneaded erasers are handy as they don’t leave any traces behind. They can also be molded into any shape you like to erase smaller areas or create highlight effects.

Sketchbook

This is essential for people learning to draw. This is where you’ll be practicing your shapes, composition, perspective, shading, and more. A handy sketchbook is useful to keep all of your doodles and drawings in one place.

Read 7 Best Sketchbooks for Markers

What we recommend:

• Strathmore Sketch Pad 100 sheets
• Canson Universal Sketch Pad

Colored Pencils

When getting into art, you must also be interested in colors, right? One medium you can practice with is colored pencils. There’s a whole world of artworks made beautifully with colored pencils. This is a beautiful medium to make your drawings come alive.

Here are some of our recommended colored pencils:

1. Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils 
2. Faber-Castell Polychromos Colored Pencils 
3. Staedtler Ergosoft Colored Pencils

Read 10 Of The Best Colored Pencils for Artists 

Paints

Your art supplies won’t be complete if you don’t have paints. Whether you like watercolors, gouache, oils, or acrylics, it’s great to have some colors in your toolkit. You won’t need a large color palette. The basic colors will be enough to get you started.

Here are some paint mediums we love:

1. Winsor & Newton Cotman Water Colours 
2. Liquitex Basics Acrylic Paints 
3. HIMI Gouache Paint 

Paint Brushes

And then, of course, paintbrushes. You can use the same basic brushes for watercolor and acrylic paints, just remember to always clean them after you use them to avoid damages.

If you want separate brushes for each medium, you can also choose to do so. For acrylics, you’ll want to have three types of brushes: a liner brush for fine details, a filbert brush for general painting, and a flat wash brush for the backgrounds.

For watercolor brushes, you’ll need a size 6 liner brush for detail painting, a size 8 or 10 round brush for general painting, and a medium-sized flat brush for washes.

Read The Best Watercolor Brushes for Beginners

Some brushes we recommend:

1. MyArtscape Paintbrushes 
2. Princeton Select Round Brushes 
3. Neptune Round Brushes

Painting Surface

When dabbling with paints, you’ll need to have suitable painting surfaces to create your artwork. For watercolor paints, you’ll need to have watercolor paper. For acrylics, either you paint them on acrylic paper or on canvas.

Our recommendations for watercolor paper can be found here: The Best Watercolor Paper for Beginners

Mixing Palette

Never underestimate the use of a simple mixing palette. Whether using acrylic paints or watercolors, even an inexpensive plastic palette can serve you well.

Here are our recommendations:

1. Plastic Palette
2. Shappy Foldable Watercolor Palette
3. Ceramic Artist Paint Palette

Table Easel

This tool made it to our essential art supplies because it just simply makes the artist’s life easier. A sturdy and stable table easel that you can easily move around is a handy tool. You can paint at the kitchen table when chatting with your family or paint at the living room when binge-watching a TV series.

Where to Buy Art Supplies

Local Art Supply Stores

You’ll find all the essential art supplies listed in this blog in your local art supply store. the advantage of buying these items in a physical store is that you can personally see what they look like before actually making the purchase. You can also ask for assistance from personnel to help you with your shopping list. Support local businesses!

Online Stores

Of course, you can also buy all these items online for convenience. When you buy online, you’ll have access to more brands. You’ll also get to read the opinions of those who have purchased the product in the reviews section.

Other Helpful Supplies for Artists

• Water container for painting
• Masking Tape
• Scissors
• Paper Towels
• Art Supply Storage Box
• Candle (for the ambiance)

Final Thoughts

And there you have it. Those are all the essential art supplies for every artist in the making. I personally have all of these supplies (and more) in my workspace over the years of doing this art hobby.

If you have other suggestions regarding this matter, I would love to hear from you in the comments section.

For more articles like this, please do visit our blog and like us on Facebook!