As an art teacher, I had to try out different supplies and experiment with mediums outside of my comfort zone to keep things fresh for my students. I learned a lot from doing that, and it brought freedom to my creative process. Creating art became less about following the rules, and more about following my curiosities and seeing what new discoveries I could make.
Years of working that way have made me more inquisitive, and interested in pushing creative boundaries and redefining what art is. To this day, one of my favorite things to do is grab a bunch of random art supplies and just start playing in my sketchbook. Give me a couple of dirty pastels, a handful of Crayola markers, a Sharpie, and some water, and I’m one happy artist.
Taking time to experiment is my approach every day, and as a result, I go through phases with my art supplies. There are times, I am all about charcoal or watercolor, then others when I only want to paint with buttery acrylics and oils.
With my 20+ years of teaching and painting experience, I’ve used hundreds of different art supplies and brands. I will only ever recommend products I have tried, and truly adore!! The list below includes some of my favorites and what I currently love using in my studio.
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Acrylic Paint
Soft-Bodied Acrylics
The most used paints in my studio are the brilliantly colored, soft-bodied acrylics by Nova Color. They have a heavy creamy consistency but are more fluid than paint you’d get from a tube. Nova paints spread beautifully, and clean up easily. I cannot sing their praises high enough! My favorite colors are… cobalt blue, phthalo turquoise, blue green, organic pyrrole orange, hansa yellow light, cadmium yellow medium, titanium white, ultramarine blue, pyrrole red, hot pink and fluorescent magenta.
The cobalt blue and pyrrole orange mix to make the most gorgeous muddy purple. LOVE!
Nova Color paint is professional artist-grade paint, which means the colors are highly pigmented, and also lightfast. You do have to order these paints from Nova’s website.
Tip: When you place your first order, I’d recommend adding a color chart to it as well. It’s a dollar and it gives you an idea of what the colors look like. Sometimes it’s hard to tell from the website.
Heavy-Bodied Acrylics
Like butter! Thick and creamy, and holds its shape. You could really pile this paint on and create a lot of texture.
Two brands I love are Golden and Holbein. Golden has a couple of wonderful starter sets. The one below is what I recommend to my students. It’s really great for learning color mixing. You can also buy Golden heavy-bodied paints by the tube at most art stores. Holbein makes a luminescent line with gorgeous, phenomenally, bright colors. These are a favorite to incorporate into my work.
Both these acrylic paint brands are professional artist-grade paints, which means they are highly pigmented and lightfast. You can also get good-quality student-grade paints, such as Liquitex Basics or Winsor & Newton Galleria. I have used paint from both of these lines, and they aren’t as lush but are an excellent choice for beginners.
Fluid Acrylics
These paints are wonderful for drips, glazes, fine details, and getting paint down quickly. These are highly pigmented, so a little goes a long way. My favorite brand is Golden, and the colors that end up in most of my paintings are: teal, green gold, and titan green pale.
Acrylic Inks
Acrylic ink is one of my most-used supplies. Painting with these extremely pigmented inks is really fun, and versatile. You can drip them, spray them, or use them like watercolors. What makes them really special though, is unlike watercolor, they are permanent once they dry.
You can use the ink with watercolor to make the paint more opaque, so it is kind of like gouache. I like to do this. They make excellent, luminous glazes to incorporate into your acrylic paintings. The fluidity of the ink also lends itself well to linework, lettering, and fine details.
The brand I love and would recommend is Daler-Rowney FW I have several bottles, and my most used colors are fluorescent pink, white, marine blue, red earth, and flame orange.
Oil Paint
I have friends who are ‘purists’ and only paint with traditional oils. If that’s something you’re interested in, great! Go for it! Personally, I have never really liked working with the solvents and the stinky turpentine needed for cleanup.
Around 2001, I first heard about water-soluble oils and started using them. At that time, they were a fairly new creation, only being on the market for about 10 years or so, but I was hooked. Depending on how thick you apply your paint, water-soluble oils stay workable for about 48 hours, sometimes longer if the paint is applied more thickly. I’m a fast and impatient worker, so that is plenty long for me, and I am still able to create lots of glazes, and layers, and get the texture of oil paint that I love.
Finding out I was pregnant with my first son, brought many changes into my life and routine, including dropping oils for a while, but not forever.
If you’re looking to try water-soluble oils, I LOVE both the Winsor & Newton and Grumbacher Max series. I often would mix and match these two brands depending on what was on sale.
Two quick tips for working with oil:
- You cannot put acrylic paint on top of oil paint.
- Also, you need brushes just for oils – I love long-handled brushes when working with this medium, so I can stand back and get some really loose brushstrokes.
Watercolor Paint
This is not my go-to medium for finished works, but I love experimenting and practicing with watercolor in my sketchbooks. I have the Winsor & Newton Cotman travel set that I like to take to the botanical gardens. It’s a great little travel kit!
I also use this metallic set in my sketchbook all the time to lay in some fun shimmery background color.
Below is my main watercolor kit. When the art studio I taught at closed, I was gifted some nice watercolor paints, but it was an assortment of different brands (mostly Winsor & Newton). I very recently just dropped them all on this palette. If I like how this works and holds up, I’ll write more about it in the future.
Daniel Smith – these are on my wish list! 🙂
Brushes
Everyone has their favorite brushes. For me, I am really hard on my brushes. I also do a lot of painting and creating when I have my boys with me – if momma is painting, they want to be painting. I’ve found it’s easier for me to just share my supplies than to have special supplies for them. So, for the most part, we use cheap brushes, but I’m still picky. I like to have just the right amount of bounce in my brush and these are great for smaller work and details. Plus, they come in fun colors! This set is also inexpensive, but nice, and has a good variety of brush sizes.
There is an exception to my use cheap brushes rule, and it is for watercolor brushes. I think quality brushes do make a difference when creating with watercolor, so I’ve splurged and bought myself some nice brushes to use ONLY with my watercolor paints. They’re still not the most expensive brushes on the market because I’m sure I will slip up and use them for something I shouldn’t. HA!
Blick Masterstroke Brushes, Sizes: Round 12, Round 8, Round 4
Paper & Canvas
My main focus when choosing a substrate is to get something that is sturdy and will hold up to several layers of painting and experimenting. I like experimenting and trying to paint on unusual items, like burlap, denim, and wood, but my go-to’s are paper and canvas.
Paper
Arches cold press watercolor paper is hands down my favorite paper! When I’m creating an acrylic or watercolor work on paper, that I’m going to take to finish or do a serious study, this is the paper I reach for. Being a premium 100% cotton paper, it is a splurge, but you get what you pay for! It holds up well to wet media and has a slightly textured surface.
For experimenting and playing, I like Canson mixed-media pads and Strathmore Mixed Media Pads. Both are great papers and hold up to lots of layers, but they tend to buckle more than Arches.
Canvas
Pre-primed canvases are what I tend to paint most of my works on. I have made my own canvases before, and I’m sure I will again when I have more time, but right now it is easier to purchase one that is stretched, primed, and ready to go. I love working mid-big (that might not be a thing, but that’s what I’m going with 😊), and when I’m feeling inspired I’ll grab a 24×30 or 30×40. This is my max size right now, I can’t go any bigger than that with pre-made canvas because they won’t fit in my vehicle. Ask me how I know. Lol ((Facepalm))
I really like Blick’s canvas! I buy the Premier Stretched Cotton Canvas. One of the nice things about these canvases is you can choose how thick they are. Traditional profile is 7/8″ deep, this might be nice if you knew you were going to frame the painting. The gallery profile is 1 1/2″ deep, and museum profile is 2 3/8″ deep, both of these (especially the museum profile) lend themselves well to painting the edges and not framing the canvas.
Palettes
When working in acrylic and oil I like using my gray palette. For a painting I am going to take to finish, I like starting with gray, it helps me to accurately see my colors. If I am just playing around in my studio and sketchbooks, one sheet of this palette can last me quite a while because as you can see, I will reuse a sheet several times before I put it in my “repurpose pile”.
I like to use cute little ceramic dishes like these ceramic flowers for watercolor & acrylic inks
Styrofoam plates will work just fine too! I use these from time to time, and often get several uses out of one plate.
Mark-making Supplies (Crayons, Pens Markers & Pencils)
When it comes to mark-making art supplies, I tend to purchase individual colors rather than big sets. This gives me the opportunity to try something new before making a big investment. Also, I know the few colors I tend to gravitate towards when making marks, so I can simply select the ones that are speaking to me.
Stabilo Pencils
I could go on and on about my love for the black Stabilo pencil. I have a few other colors that are fun and get used often too.
Charcoal
I love working with charcoal! It comes in so many forms – stick, pencil, block, flat square block, and even powder.
Most of my acrylic paintings start with me laying a layer of charcoal down first, normally in the form of a word or quote.
Dewalt Ink Watercolor Pencils
These pencils are so fun to use! Right now I am using these mostly in my sketchbook, but I love how intense and vibrant the colors are.
Uni-ball Signo White Gel Pen
This pen gets used every day in my sketchbook. In fact, I have several of them stashed all over my studio.
Markers
Who says art supplies have to be fancy and expensive? One of my favorite ways to create backgrounds in my sketchbook is with water-based markers. My go-to markers are inexpensive Crayola markers like the ones you used to use in grade school and Tombow dual brush pens. The Tombow brush pens are more vibrant and feel lusher than the Crayola markers. I mix and match both all the time though.
Posca Pens
I’ve used many different types of paint pens and these are my favorite for use in my artwork and in my sketchbook.
Tip: Store your markers and paint pens flat rather than upright. Storing dual-tip markers and pens horizontally helps to evenly distributed paint or ink in the cartridge, and keep the tip of the marker wet. Additionally, for alcohol markers, like Sharpies, storing them horizontally helps prevent the ink from evaporating.
Handy Tools
Spatulas
I have a selection of these, Princeton Catalyst silicone spatulas, and they are great for mark-making and creating interesting textures in your paintings. Some of them come on a stick, like the picture below, but they also make handheld scrappers.
You could also get creative and shop your house for some interesting tools too, think of things like an old credit card, a bamboo skewer, and a cardboard edge with some notches cut into it.
Bamboo Skewer
Speaking of bamboo skewers, I use them all the time!
Palette Knives
This is a great little set of palette knives that offers a lot of variety. Lots of different sizes and shapes for mixing and making marks.
Water bottles
Spraying water and spraying acrylic inks. I keep a big water bottle filled with water with me at all times. It is used to keep my paints wet and to help spread inks and acrylics around my paintings.
I also like to dilute a few drops of acrylic ink with some water in these mini spray bottles. It creates a fun spray effect with the paint.
Heat gun
This is used for drying my sketchbook pages when I’m too impatient to let them dry naturally.
Mediums and Varnishes
Gesso
White acrylic and gesso are not the same things. You can read more about what gesso is here. The consistency and texture of gesso can vary from brand to brand. Some are more liquidy and others are thicker. Some apply more smoothly and others leave a more textured, toothy surface. You’ll have to experiment with different brands to find the one you like best. You can also get gesso in white, black or clear.
Nova’s white gesso is something I buy by the pourable gallon. It’s one of my favorite art supplies because it’s the perfect consistency for what I like to do and leaves just the right amount of tooth when it dries. My favorite way to use it (other than prime substrates) is to add it to my charcoal drawings. It makes the most beautiful gray when it mixes with the charcoal!
I like this gesso from Liquitex, too. It’s a little thicker than Nova’s gesso. Both are great professional-grade products.
Matte Gel Medium
I use this mostly for collaging.
That brings us to the end of my favorite art supplies. This is an ever-evolving list, and I will try my best to keep it updated as I fall in love with new products or as things become unavailable.
One final thought, you don’t need to have all of these materials to make beautiful art! Get creative with the supplies you have on hand, and slowly build your collection. I don’t want you to feel like your bank account is keeping you from being able to be creative. My supply closet has been growing and changing for many, many years! 😊
