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Art supplies for beginners to professionals
25
items Supplies that won’t make you give up. As a professional artist and teacher, crappy supplies can make you feel like you suck. You don’t. Get what works well.
Sections
6
Paint
Tools
Surfaces
Best drawing supplies for all levels
Palettes
Easels
Paint
Great pigmentation and ratio of pigment to binder so it’s not too soft and not to stiff. Consistent in colors from tube to tube. I don’t find much difference between student grade and professional grade. Love this paint!!!
High quality, affordable oil paint for beginners and professionals.
A professionals choice. Great pigmentation and huge color selection. Consistent high quality. Worth the price.
Professional quality watercolor paint
Perfect for beginners and professionals. High pigmentation and good flow. Not as heavy body or opaque as other brands so coverage can take a few passes. I get all my students to get this brand though. I use it for edging my canvas, underpaintings for...
Liquitex Basics Acrylics for artists at all stages.
A reliable brand for quality and diversity. I like their heavy body paint most due to my style of painting but have seen a lot of other artist use their fluid acrylic line so beautifully.
Golden acrylic paint for assured quality and diversity.
Having a little travel set of Daler and Rowney is perfect for the traveller, dabbler, or beginner. Great pigmentation. The set in the link is one I own and use for travel sketching. It’s also the one that I used for commissions at the beginning of my...
Best brand for beginners and hobbyists
Tools
Palette knives are an essential tool for acrylic and oil users. If you use these for mixing colors instead of your paint brush, you save the longevity of the brush and don’t waste paint! You can also use them for applying the paint too. Makes great l...
An essential tool that saves your brushes
Natural Hog hair brushes are long lasting and provide more coverage than synthetic brushes. Natural hair has ridges within the hair that captures and holds in more paint, which is why you can spread paint further. You can scrub right into the canvas ...
Acrylic and oil paintbrush workhorses
I use synthetic brushes for acrylic and oil when I need to be delicate, glaze, or blend an area of my oil paint. Most synthetic brushes can be used for an entire painting but I find that they can split if they are too soft or too thin (not enough bri...
Best Synthetic brushes for acrylic and oil
My favorite Watercolor brushes of all time. Never ever get a brush that says “all media” for Watercolor. Watercolor brushes are the one brush that provides a special purpose - to soak up and hold water. Multimedia brushes do not do this.
The Royal a...
Affordable Watercolor brushes that provide professional results
Surfaces
My favorite watercolor paper on the market. True 100% cotton that dries slowly so you can take advantage of wet in wet or wet on dry techniques. Well sized so their no “beading” in random spots like their grease on the paper. A treasure to work with.
Best Watercolor paper for professionals
This is a great paper for beginner Watercolor artists to test Watercolor techniques, but you have to work quicker than if you were using 100%cotton. It says it’s 100%cotton, but doesn’t function like it. This paper is also amazing for multimedia use ...
Watercolor Paper - for more than Watercolor
Smooth surfaces for acrylic, oil, and Watercolor. Paint just glides over the surface like an ASMR video. It’s just so satisfying. They are pricey and don’t come in very large sizes, so I only use them for small paintings for square foot shows or fest...
Ampersand Panels for the serious artist
Stretched canvas or linen has an old world feel. I love to use canvas when painting big for a few reasons. If I need to ship it, I can take it off the canvas and roll it so it’s easier and cheaper to ship. I also like the texture and “bounce back” of...
Artist Canvas: Ready Stretched or By the Metre | Jackson's Art
Best drawing supplies for all levels
From quick sketch to final drawings, find what you need without the guesswork
Willow charcoal are the branches of the willow tree that have been burned to charcoal. It’s a little more brown than carbon charcoal but it’s a great medium for quick coverage and quick sketches to get your ideas down. Use a kneadable eraser to easil...
Willow Charcoal
Fabulous travel pack of 3 densities to create a small range of values. I love the that it comes with the sharpener and eraser.
Faber-Castell 9000 Pencils - Art Set
Like sticky tack, Pull it apart, knead it after you use it, shape it, point it but just don’t use it like a traditional eraser. This isn’t for eraser mistakes, it’s for developing volume through subtracting graphite or charcoals or pastels to make li...
FaberCastell Kneaded Eraser
An essential when working with graphite, charcoal or even soft pastels. These are basically compressed paper used to blend your values or colors for a smooth transition.
You can clean them by just rubbing the color/graphite off on a scrap piece of ...
Staedtler Blending Stumps
Dreamy smooth inky black pens for fine drawing. I use them to create cool studies with lots of contour lines!
Sakura Pigma Micron Pens and Sets
Palettes
Ceramic palettes are a must for watercolour. Plastic makes the water bead up and is too difficult to determine the right right color or make the right amount. Ceramic is porous and thus spreads out the water and pigment for proper use. Getting one wi...
Ceramic Palettes
Stay wet palettes make sure your acrylics and gouache stay west for DAYS! Make sure to get an extra pack of stay wet paper!
Stay-Wet Palette
Glass palettes are the best for oil paint because they’re so easy to clean. If you don’t have space for a large tempered glass, you could always use a pie plate! Transportable palettes are great to cover and put in the freezer to extend the life of y...
Glass Palette (with Tempered Glass)
An option I see many oil painters use but not one I’d ever use. The maintenance and re-oiling of wood is not time I have for. But by all means, try it, it’s environmental friendly…except for the chopping down of trees for it 🤷♀️
The hopeless romantic wood palette
Easels
Wooden floor easels are sturdy and reliable and have this old school romantic feeling.
Easels
I have had my metal easel for about 20 years. It’s moved with my across country and been used in live shows and art fairs. It’s truly a work horse that’s easily transportable.
Easels
An portable easel choice will depend on your medium and where you’re going to use it. A Watercolor easel like the one from Meeden should have a surface that can lay flat to avoid dripping while oil and acrylic doesn’t necessarily need this. I have a ...
Plein Air Easels