Drawing materials: Essentials to start drawing

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If you love art and you want to start learning it, my personal advice for you is to start with graphite drawing. It's the key to mastering art.

Starting with it has several benefits:

·        It's the most ancient and popular drawing medium: that's you can find many sources to learn from; books, videos, blogs….etc.

·        You can afford it even if you're on budget.

·        You can use it to draw with different styles: realism, mange, comics…etc.

·        You can draw from really quick sketches to super detailed wok.

·        You gain incredible knowledge about: lights and darks, contrast and values, highlights and shadows; which is the most important basics for painting.

After deciding to start with graphite drawing, the next thing you need to know is your tools.

What drawing materials essential for you to start drawing:

As I said before you can start even if you're on budget; you don't need a lot of tools and they're not expensive.

1-   Your pencils:

You need two kinds of pencils;

·       Wooden graphite pencils:

Those you can get either individually or as a set with different led sizes, I recommend you to start with a set of at least six pencils. I use STAEDTLER pencils they're affordable and I'm happy with them, but you can use whatever brand you like.

·       Mechanical pencils:

My go to mechanical pencil is rotring 0.5 with HB 0.5 led for sharp finer details.

2-   Your erasers:

You need three kinds of erasers;

·        Rubber Eraser: for wide areas.

·      Pencil shaped erasers: for fine details used to draw hair, fur and highlights.

·       Kneaded Eraser:    It can be pulled and fashioned into different forms to create specific marks and fine details.

3-   Sharpener: 

You can use either the manual pencil sharpener or the electric pencil sharpener.

4-   PITT graphite pure pencils:

My go to pencils are the 2900 9B and the 129909 9B pencils from FABER-CASTELLE.

They're great for covering large spaces quickly and you can get super dark results with them; which improves the drawing contrast to get better results.

5-   Charcoal or Conté :

Many drawings can't be finished without charcoal which is used to get the darkest shadows. Charcoal comes in both stick and pencil form.

 Sticks of charcoal are usually either “vine” or “compressed”.  Vine charcoal is softer and produces lighter marks, while compressed charcoal – which is concentrated, produces darker marks.

Charcoal pencils are either "soft" or "hard".

Conté is similar to charcoal in richness of color – however the makeup of the material is different.  Charcoal is burnt organic material, while conté is made of clay constituents. It has a harder led than charcoal, so its pencils are better for details.

You can you a brush with charcoal and Conté sticks by scraping some on a paper and using the brush to apply soft shadows.

6-   Blending stumps:

Blending stumps are essential for smudging or moving material around on the surface.  A blending stump allows the artist to create gradations in value without introducing the oils of the finger (through finger smudging) which can make a drawing look dirty or uncontrolled.

Blending stumps also allow the artist to create gradations and smooth applications of value in areas of detail that may be hard to get to otherwise.

7-   Sandpaper block:  

It's used to wear down the pencil shaped eraser to maintain a sharp edge to easily create fine details.

8-   Piece of fabric and q tips: 

Fabric (Chamois or cotton) and tissue are great for blending large areas and creating smooth skin.

q tips is another way for blending small areas.

9-   Sketch book:

You can either use a small sketch book or a large one. There're so many brands, but personally I prefer FABRIANO soft surface sketches.

You can also use FABRIANO individual sheets.

10-                     Fixative:

It's used after finishing the drawing only to seal it and prevent it from fading over time.

11-                     Masking tape:

It's used to tape the edges of the drawing and removed after finishing carefully for getting a clean fine edge, also it's used to tape the paper on your drawing board or whatever surface you use.