8 DRAWING SUPPLIES for Beginners

Hey! I'm Darlene and here's my list of recommended drawing tools for beginners. First, you'll want an affordable sketchbook that you don't mind scribbling in, or even tearing a few pages out of. This is where you're going to do a lot of practice work, so make sure you'll feel comfortable with sacrificing a few pages to learn a new drawing technique. Now, I'd recommend choosing a sketchbook with thick sheets for durability purposes. If you're buying one online, you can tell how thick the sheets are just by looking at the weight indicated on the cover. I recommend something around 50-60 pounds. Also, if you plan to keep your sketchbook for a very long time, make sure it's acid-free to prevent fading and yellowing. This also applies to drawing pads. Grab yourself a drawing pad for polished artwork. The pages are usually thicker, and can therefore hold up to a lot more abuse, and it won't easily wrinkle. Choose a paper texture based on your preference. This is usually labeled as the tooth. A smooth or fine tooth will give you a smoother result than a medium tooth paper, and it's great for detailed drawings. Now, the benefit of a medium tooth is you can layer on more graphite or colored pencil, because there's more surface area, more hills and valleys for the medium to grab onto. You might be most familiar with the HB or No. 2 pencil from using it in grade school. It's actually great for sketching and practicing with. But when you want to make your drawings darker and give them more contrast and depth, you'll need a softer pencil. Soft pencils are also easier to blend. This tin has an array of pencils that go from soft to hard, or dark to light. Although you don't need to have all of them in order to create drawings with realistic depth. Having a set like this just makes the shading process easier and puts less strain on your hand while you draw. Now, if this is out of your budget, I recommend just getting two or three pencils. A hard pencil for sketching, drawing construction lines, and some light shading. And then one or two soft pencils for shading those medium to dark values. I recommend two types of erasers. A solid one, like this plastic mono eraser, to erase large areas or parts of your drawing that don't require precision erasing. And then for erasing fine details, I highly recommend adding a kneaded eraser to your toolbox. You can mold it into any shape to erase even the tiniest detail in your drawing. No rubbing required, just press and lift. You don't have to deal with wiping away any crumbs or erasing more than you actually need. All the tools mentioned in this video and ones that I recommend will be linked to in the video description. If you're enjoying this video so far, please give it a thumbs up. I really like sharpeners that are made of all metal because the structure doesn't give while I push and rotate the pencil, giving me a perfectly sharp pencil every time. Now, if you need to sharpen your pencil very often because perhaps you draw with a very heavy hand or you use mostly soft pencils, it probably makes more sense to get an electric sharpener. A ruler comes in handy for perspective drawing and any other construction lines that you may need to draw. I find that a transparent one works best because it doesn't block my view of the drawing. To prevent unwanted smudges across your hard work, use any clean scrap piece of paper to keep your skin from rubbing against the drawing. If you don't want to worry about moving the paper around every time you move your hand, get something like a smudge guard glove that moves with you. To get your shading to look really smooth, you'll want a blending tool. That can be a q-tip, a soft tissue paper or even toilet paper. If you need to blend a detailed area, fold the tissue over twice and then fold it into a triangle several times to get a fine point. Once the tissue becomes dirty, just find a clean spot and then fold it again. If you want a blending tool that has a greater amount of stiffness, check out my DIY video to learn how you can make your very own paper blending stump out of materials that you can find around your house. If you have any essential tools to add to the list, share in the comment section below to help other beginners in the community. For more great art content and detailed tutorials, subscribe to my channel and hit that bell icon. Thanks for watching!