Jo's Old Site

Brenda’s third lesson is headed “buying drawing supplies” and she recommends that beginners should start their journey by buying the best that they can comfortably afford when buying most materials. And as I read through the third lesson noticed that the exception was when buying a pencil sharpener as she recommends a inexpensive handheld metal pencil sharpener that can take both regular and oversized pencils. Brenda then creates a descriptive list of all the materials that she recommends a beginner to start off with such as “hardcovered sketchbooks” and also tells us to experiment with the “drawing paper” as there is such a variety of colours, textures, and sizes.

She also advises against getting art books that are less than nine by twelve inches saying that their space is too limiting and also advises against choosing art paper that is extremely smooth; as this sort of paper is difficult to work with. Then says that the “medium tooth paper” is the most popular as it is somewhere between “smooth” and “rough.” Also another type of paper she recommends is watercolour paper which is coarse and highly textured it also holds marks made by graphite very well. The next item on the list is pencils and comes in various grades. Also pencils that are graded with the letter H are the hardest and leave the lightest marks while pencils that are graded B are the softest and leave the darkest marks.

Then mechanical pencils are another option and I came across this word in the first lesson and wondered what they were like. They can also hold various grades of graphite that are both hard and soft and then another thing that Brenda says about them is that they are ideal for sketching loosely or drawing on large surfaces. There are also other types of material that we can draw with and they are “chalk pastels,” “charcoal,” “conte” “coloured pencils” as well as “pens” and “markers.” The next thing she suggests is getting a portfolio case to protect our works and recommends getting ones that are hard sided.

Another thing that is definitely needed is erasers and she recommends vinyl erasers and kneaded erasers and get them both as they are useful and can do different things. Then the third last thing that is recommended are tools for blending and they leave an effect when rubbed on shaded lines and again we can experiment here but whatever we use must be clean. Brenda then lists some items that can be used are things like cotton balls, tissues, and chamois.