Resources: Poll about art supplies
Oct. 28th, 2017 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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drawesomeHey all, sorry for being so absent last week. I'm back and off to comment on all your wonderful Inktober posts in the next couple of days.
ETA: I decided to make a poll. Sorry if the answer options a kinda dumb, it's my first poll ever.
sexycazzy mentioned subscribing to one of those art supplies box services where you get a mixed bag of art supplies each month, I think earlier there was a post or a comment about a service like that in the US (and after a brief search I realized there a a lot of services like that out there). So, questions:
1. Who here has (is being) using a service like that and what on earth do you do with the supplies that pile up? Since you don't know beforehand what you'll get, I'm imagining there's supplies left and right that aren't being used.
2. Do you have recommendations for sites where supplies are being reviewed (apart from amazon which is obvious)? Of course, I have my local stationary store I use for the basics (it has reduced price on Schmincke watercolours at the moment which is fantastic). For the rest I use a German online art supplier. Unfortunately its site is pretty light on the customer reviews.I'm guessing I'm looking for your personal experiences with different supplies as well as trusted sites where I can believe the reviewers. That box-service is awfully tempting (and since I'm not a poor student anymore I could probably afford one) but I am hesitant to spend money when I'll have stuff here that's not getting used.
Oh right, I'm looking for ink stuff, pastels, watercolours and brushes mostly. And there probably are a lot of cool special effects tools out there that I don't even know exist.
ETA: I decided to make a poll. Sorry if the answer options a kinda dumb, it's my first poll ever.
Poll #18995 Art supplies
This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16
Where do you get your art supplies?
View Answers
local art supply shop
11 (68.8%)
online art supply shop (which?)
4 (25.0%)
get them as birthday/Christmas gifts
3 (18.8%)
a subscription service (artsnacks, scrawlrbox...)
1 (6.2%)
amazon
5 (31.2%)
ebay
0 (0.0%)
other (please put info in the comments)
5 (31.2%)
Where do you get your information about art supplies?
View Answers
Manufacturer sites
2 (12.5%)
Customer reviews in online shops
3 (18.8%)
my local art supply store
2 (12.5%)
Artist friends
7 (43.8%)
Artist blogs (which?)
2 (12.5%)
Review blogs (which?)
0 (0.0%)
I usually just buy and try them out myself
9 (56.2%)
Other (please specify in comments)
7 (43.8%)
sexycazzy mentioned subscribing to one of those art supplies box services where you get a mixed bag of art supplies each month, I think earlier there was a post or a comment about a service like that in the US (and after a brief search I realized there a a lot of services like that out there). So, questions:1. Who here has (is being) using a service like that and what on earth do you do with the supplies that pile up? Since you don't know beforehand what you'll get, I'm imagining there's supplies left and right that aren't being used.
2. Do you have recommendations for sites where supplies are being reviewed (apart from amazon which is obvious)? Of course, I have my local stationary store I use for the basics (it has reduced price on Schmincke watercolours at the moment which is fantastic). For the rest I use a German online art supplier. Unfortunately its site is pretty light on the customer reviews.I'm guessing I'm looking for your personal experiences with different supplies as well as trusted sites where I can believe the reviewers. That box-service is awfully tempting (and since I'm not a poor student anymore I could probably afford one) but I am hesitant to spend money when I'll have stuff here that's not getting used.
Oh right, I'm looking for ink stuff, pastels, watercolours and brushes mostly. And there probably are a lot of cool special effects tools out there that I don't even know exist.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-28 11:49 am (UTC)I get all my art supplies whenever I travel abroad, every 1 or 2 years, mainly from this wonderful art supply shop called Curry's in Toronto. I usually end up filling my suitcase with watercolour pads, sketchbooks, canvas on sale, good quality brushes and acrylic paint.
These are items that are either rare, unavailable or crazy expensive on my island, so I'm usually like a kid at Christmas when I'm wandering around their store, wishing I could fit one of everything in my suitcase! :b
On Recs:
Recently, I've been getting a lot of wonderful recs and reviews for art supplies on YouTube. :)
(ETA: UUUGHH! I just clicked over at their website and now I am COVETING MASKING FLUID, AND PRETTY COLOURED AND GOLD INK, AND... And I won't be back in Toronto until next year July. /o\ /o\ /o\)
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Date: 2017-10-29 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-10-28 01:09 pm (UTC)And yeah, I keep getting ideas from youtube livestreaming art tutorials, and then there’s some other thing I want to get and try!
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Date: 2017-10-29 11:06 am (UTC)I don’t like that you get very little info about the product on the on-line interface
Yep that's my problem as well with online suppliers.
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Date: 2017-10-28 01:31 pm (UTC)Paris is full of local art shops so I have no trouble dropping in one when I need something specific, but I also sometime impulse buy in art store I come across in foreign countries/cities (London and Bruxelles are the prime suspects here^^)
My most useful art supplies are :
- a travel box of watercolors my friends got me when I was in highschool. It got 12 colors and honestly I never needed more. For some years I took it everywhere and used it a lot, and even now it is extra useful.
- a Pentel Pocket Brush, black ink. My favorite tool ever, couldn't live without it.
- a water brush (a brush with an empty reservoir you can fill with water). Extra useful as well. The brand doesn't matter and it goes with the watercolors like a dream.
- Staedtler pigment liners : technical pens with waterproof ink. My most used tips are 0.3 and 0.5
Always good to have :
- Posca pens : paint markers, ubiquitously useful, be it for writing on boxes, on walls, or anywhere else. Waterproof once dry, you can go by with a couple of black ones, a red one, and maybe a white one (they are very good for covering mistakes on white paper!)
- Colorex inks : Bright, extracovering inks, waterproof once dry. All my brightly colored Inktober drawings have been made with mixes from just four inks : black, yellow, cyan, magenta. A bit hard to master, but the brightness of colors is soooo rewarding. I sometime use them to complement watercolors.
- couple of brush of different sizes, but I'm not very knowledgeable on the brands or the kind of brushes
Regarding notebooks, I used Moleskines for years and still do, but my favorite notebooks are from l'Orange Bleue : https://orange-bleue.fr/8-carnets
They do cheap, big, thick papered gorgeous drawing books. I used many, in many sizes, kind of paper and shapes, and always enjoyed them.
I'm actually doing my Inktober in what I thought was my last drawing book from them, leftover from my student years... Only it turns out I had a few more left! I was very happy when I found them. <3
Actually most of the inking stuff I use can be found here : http://mrjakeparker.com/tools
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Date: 2017-10-29 11:12 am (UTC)Is the Pentel waterproof and refillable? I am currently looking for a pen like that but want to have a refillable one (environmental reasons).
By the way your picture looks great! The Inktober logo turned out really well. :-)
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Date: 2017-10-29 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-03 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 04:28 pm (UTC)The Pentel is indeed both waterproof and refillable. ACtually I just changed my cartridge this morning!
Thanks! I realised after posting that the Inktober was missing a squiggle, it's all fixed now, but I'm too lazy to take a new picture! ^^
It's a good exemple of what you can do with a white posca as well! ^^
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Date: 2017-11-03 08:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-28 10:07 pm (UTC)I got Mozart Water Brush Pens (the fillable kind) after seeing a Youtuber use them to get the exact effect I'd been wanting in some of my work. Still, the paper just ends up soggy. I don't know if there is a knack to it, or if I should be using different ink? She appeared to be using the same basic strathmore sketch that I use.
Finding out that different tools can give certain results can be magical. I might try a bit of a box service, though I don't want to wind up with too much stuff.
I did learn a bit about tools from taking a few drawing courses. One tool that I never see anyone else use is a specific brush for pencil art. I use it to brush the look graphite off and also eraser bits while working. It leads to lean smudging. I see others fussing with getting eraser stuff off, but I just use the same goat hair crush that I've had for years and it gets everything I don't want on my sheet off.
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Date: 2017-10-29 11:16 am (UTC)Probably best to ask
Btw, that brush you use to brush off excess stuff from paper: I use a very cheap make-up blusher brush for that. Originally I used it to clean my laptop keyboard and then one day used it for my eraser marks. Worked a treat so now it's used for both.
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Date: 2017-10-30 06:27 am (UTC)Nice to hear someone else uses a brush that way! I use my camera cleaning brushes on my keyboard ... more than I should. That is probably going to bite me in the butt at some point.
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Date: 2017-10-30 04:44 pm (UTC)Re: brushes, yeah probably. Hope the camera lenses aren’t too expensive ;-)
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Date: 2017-10-29 04:39 pm (UTC)From the top of my head you would need at least 180g paper if you do more than watercolor without a lot of water. I bought 370g canson paper recently, and even that will warp a bit if you use a lot of water.
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Date: 2017-10-30 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-30 06:00 am (UTC)First is I second
Second is that water brushes actually are more likely to make things soggy because even if you're not squeezing the brush, gravity pulls the water down while you work and so it's always pushing water (+ink, if you filled it with ink) onto your page instead of running out the way a dipped brush would. If you're dipping the water brush into ink and trying to squeeze water out to lighten it, that's going to end up with too much water. Personally I just decided to make a couple of my brushes dedicated inkwash brushes, and I put some drops of ink into the barrels with the water to get the tone I want, so I don't have to mix an ink wash mix every time, and that helps me get a more even wash and not soak the paper through.
Third, you can try blotting? Keep some paper towels near you, and if there's too much water after you try to do a wash you can gently dab the paper towel to soak it up a little. Keep in mind this will lighten your wash, also, but you can let it fully dry and do another wash if you need to intensify the color.
Fourth, if you're impatient about waiting for layers to dry you can also invest in a heat tool to dry out the page faster. It's kind of like a hairdryer but less intense on the blowing and more intense on the heat.
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Date: 2017-10-30 06:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-28 11:31 pm (UTC)Most of the time, I just use whatever's around - until recently I used mostly digital artwork but with the Inkobter I returned to traditional drawing and started to enjoy it more and more!
When I have the time, I will have a look in my cupboard and sort through the art supplies I've got and try to get back into painting once again but the problem is SPACE! lol
Most of the art supplies were from a shop called 'The Works' - I love shopping there because it's good for value (ie inexpensive) and there are plenty of art supplies to choose from.
I bought my colouring pens from Amazon - they are used mostly for colouring books. :-)
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Date: 2017-10-29 11:17 am (UTC)Please do, I'm sure lots of us are interested in that!
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Date: 2017-10-30 06:44 am (UTC)Get Sketch and Paletteful pack look possible tho.
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Date: 2017-11-03 09:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 05:55 am (UTC)And for informations about art supplies I get them from twitch (like if there's a streamer that does something I like I check what they use) or youtube.
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Date: 2017-10-29 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 02:23 pm (UTC)I personally recommend zLadyLuthien and ashereast they both do watercolour and LadyLuthien sometimes does ink, pastels and gouache (she tries a lot of things). If you scroll down in the links you can see their streaming schedules and links to their websites :)
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Date: 2017-10-29 08:47 am (UTC)I used to go to a couple of art stores in one of the central business districts of my city to buy nice coloring pencils, mechanical pencils, and gel pens. I've never painted, really, just drawn. I don't think a subscription service would have suited me, as I really wanted to see the precise colors before I bought them.
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Date: 2017-10-29 11:23 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-10-31 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-30 09:37 pm (UTC)Finally!
cheers
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Date: 2017-10-29 03:41 pm (UTC)If you're nervous about a specific product, I find the Dick Blick reviews pages for products can be pretty comprehensive.
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Date: 2017-11-03 08:46 am (UTC)Hey cool I hadn't heard of that site before. Thank you!
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Date: 2017-10-30 05:44 am (UTC)I'm also reccing youtube reviews. It's the most useful to me since I can watch how things actually work when an artist reviews it by doing samples or color swatches. Jetpens and Goulet pens also have some good sampling on their websites, usually including pen test sheets at least and sometimes also videos, comparisons, and suggestion lists. Goulet has a great selection of inks, notebooks, and fountain pens, but not much else, they're more oriented to fountain pen enthusiasts than general artists. Jetpens has a lot of import pens and pencils I can't get elsewhere. I also buy from Dickblick for paints, they're usually one of the cheapest. But also Amazon, if it's available and reasonably cheap because I can get faster shipping, or the Michael's chain (probably US only?) or my local art shops (Meinengers and a stationery store) if I need something immediately. For some things like Copic markers, I've bought off eBay to get them cheaper.
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