Art Tools and Supplies For Beginners #2 - Watercolour

It's been a very long time since I've written a post on the basic art tools and supplies for beginners. So, to carry the series on, here is #2 all dedicated to watercolour!

Watercolour is personally my favourite type of painting due to the freedom it allows you to have for you to express your feelings, and emotions into creating an artwork that you truly love and appreciate. It sometimes can be hard and frustrating to deliver an aesthetically pleasing image that you're 100% satisfied with , but as long as you have the access to the correct equipments and techniques, you're then ready to go!


Brushes

 You cannot go wrong with purchasing a set of brilliant quality brushes. Having soft, excellent brushes are key to any type of painting as they take the control of the contents on your blank paper. 

Having a large but a flat brush is really useful when it comes to painting large sections, especially when you at the same time need to look out for the areas you need to pay attention to a bit more as well.

Small and thin brushes that tend to have a sharp end are also important to have in your collection, as they are experts at illustrating the smallest details on your artwork. The picture on the left is a set of brushes I Have from Royal Taklon. The brushes are extremely soft and honestly, the quality of them are wonderful to paint what you desire. They are sold in any art or craft shop for a very decent price. I got mine for around £10 but I'm not sure if they're still available. 
Here's a link to where you can get them online:
 http://www.therange.co.uk/search?isInStock=true&isInStock=true&isSearchFilterSuffix=true&isSearchFilterSuffix=true&visible=true&isNatural=true&results=16&productAttributeValue=&resetFilters=true&productsPerPage=16&productAttributeName=&keywords=royal%20taklon&performSearch=true&OWASP_CSRFTOKEN=NIMS-4UQL-VZS8-AXDD-CPGQ-7HYN-KIHO-43T8&languageId=1&asug=&visModel=CHANNEL&visModel=CHANNEL&page=1

Water colour

























There are few types of watercolour you can choose from, such as the ones in the tube or the watercolour tablet. Personally, I much more prefer the ones where you squeeze out of the tube as shown above, because I can have much more freedom to mix up the different colours in their wide colour range. 
The brand that I recommend using is the Water Colour Set by Reeves which comes in 24 different colours.I bought mine for around £10 on Amazon. 



If you want a more basic set, you can always purchase the Reeves Water Colour Set that come with 12 different colours. The price is around £5 at any art or craft store.







Tub & Water









It wouldn't be called watercolour without water right? Water is crucial in watercolour painting, it helps you to take the control of the opacity of the colour you desire.Don't worry about purchasing a new container, just grab any plastic container that you no longer need!

Colour Palette 

You can't go wrong with having a colour palette. It's super useful when it comes to create all sort of different vivid colours for your artwork. You can get a small palette to begin with, which is sold in any art store for an extremely cheap price. However, if you want to, you can of course purchase a large palette like the one shown below!

Art Tools And Supplies For Beginners #1 - Sketching

In this post, I'm going to talk about the basic art supplies and tools that beginner want to use for sketching.

First of all, you definitely need paper.There are tons of different paper to choose from. But to start off, you can sketch on basic papers or you can go for a sketch book that has better quality papers. You can have any size of paper you want, either A5, A4 or A3. I personally use A4 paper the most. In the picture on the left, it's the A4 sketchbook I use. The brand is Winsor & Newton and I have the one with 50 sheets. In my opinion, the papers inside aren't the best quality but they're better than the basic A4 printing papers. You can get those sketchbooks in any art store and they are usually priced at about £5, which is a pretty decent price for a fantastic sketch                                                                                       book.

Secondly, pencils are your best friends for sketching. If you are a beginner, you can choose to start off with a basic HB pencil that you write with. However, if you want to get the most detailed drawing and the most precise shading, using varieties of sketching pencils will be great! You can find sketching pencils in any art store and they ususally come in a set which vary from the lightest shade of 4H to the darkest shade of 8B or 12B.

The order of the shades are - 4H, 2H, H, F, HB, B, 2B, 3B, 4B, 5B, 6B, 8B, 12B. The price of sketching pencils vary a lot depending on the brand and the quality. The brand of the pencils I'm currently using is Daler Rowney and the price they are usually sold at is £3.40.

Thirdly, what you'll need is a rubber which makes your life a million times easier! Nevertheless, if you want to take a step ahead to make your art work stand out even more. You can use the soft kneaded rubber which can add beautiful highlights to your shading. 

Next, you need a sharpener! Of course, what else do you need it for other than sharpening those pencils! Just grab any sharpener that will do you the job for you and your problem will be solved!

You may wonder, 'why do I need brushes for pencil sketching?' Well, the purpose of brushes is not only for painting but also smudging. Brushes are excellent tools for smudging, they will help you to blend your shading perfectly to create a beautiful, smooth finish without your art work looking cakey just like using a make-up brush! The brand of brush I use is Royal Taklon and I definitely recommand getting them as they have amazing quality brushes for either painting or smudging!

Lastly, the final tools I suggest getting are blending stumps. As you can tell from the name, the purpose of them is for blending your shadings. They all come in different sizes and you can use the larger ones to blend in larger areas, and the thinner ones to blend in more detailed areas. Not only they can be used for pencil sketches, they can be used for blending in colour crayons and oil pastels as well. You can get blending stumps in any art store, and they are usually sold at a very cheap, decent price. I got mine pack of 3 for only £1 and they work extremely well!