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Buying Art Supplies
ToxxicFoxx
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Registered User new member
I'm trying to put together a birthday present for my girlfriend, and she's quite the artist, so I was thinking of putting together a travel kit full of art supplies so that she can leave her personal supplies at home when she travels and comes to visit me. The thing is, I am not really artistic at all, and I'm not really sure what to put in there other than a few basics.
I already bought pencils and an eraser, but other than an inking pen I don't know what else to put in. I know she's worked with markers in the past, but I don't know what to buy without coming right out and asking for her preferences.
Does anyone have any suggestions about what would be a mandatory inclusion in the kit and what might be nice to have?
I already bought pencils and an eraser, but other than an inking pen I don't know what else to put in. I know she's worked with markers in the past, but I don't know what to buy without coming right out and asking for her preferences.
Does anyone have any suggestions about what would be a mandatory inclusion in the kit and what might be nice to have?
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If it's just a basic travel kit where she won't be doing in depth work, I'd suggest just a good sketch kit. A good variety of pencils, several different types of erasers, a couple different types of charcoal, and maybe some sketch books with a variety of different types of papers.
It's kinda hard to give really concrete suggestions without knowing how she likes to work and with what; there's a whole ton of variety in art supplies, and a whole ton of variety about how picky people are about their art supplies, so picking out stuff she'll actually use may or may not be difficult- my suggestion frankly would pay attention to what she's already using (surely she's got some stuff lying around her desk or something?) and make some mental notes for when you go to the store.
I'll try to point you in what I think is an ok general direction, but I could be totally wrong about everything depending on what she prefers. Stuff to look out for (spoilered to not overwhelm the preceding advice, which is the more important thing):
-Pencil sharpener: most of the dinky little handheld ones are terrible, if you can find a small battery powered electric one, she'd probably appreciate it. If she uses leadholders, she'll need one of these (I prefer leadholders because you can get really sharp points and sharpening them is much quieter than using an electric sharpener...if she does a lot of drawing at night or with people in close proximity, they might appreciate that feature as well.)
-Paper texture/weight: Papers have a variety of surfaces and thicknesses to them, and give different effects.
Smooth heavyweight paper is generally for fine rendering, and coarse lightweight paper is for sketching. If she's doing any serious inking, she'll likely use a smooth Bristol paper, which is a very smooth, very heavyweight paper,- for very rendered pencil work she might use either smooth bristol, or bristol vellum (which has a little more tooth to it), or some other heavyweight paper.
For a general sketchbook I personally like these as a good medium on price/number of sheets/paper quality.
-Erasers: I'd go with a rubber kneaded eraser and a white Staedtler eraser for this.
-If you're going to go for markers, your major options are Prismacolor and Copic, though like Mushroom said, they ain't cheap.
-Inking supplies: you mentioned an inking pen, but what does she personally use? She might appreciate a set of microns, or she might prefer a dip pen/brush setup like this.
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Many artists who haven't use these seem to like 'em. If not for drawing, then for just colouring in big fields of black.
(altough i have some bad experience in taking these along with flights, the ink just shot out into my hand as i opened it due to the pressure...)
Artists are picky, and if you buy them supplies they don't like, they won't use them.
Pretty much this. And I can't tell you how many times I've gotten one of these:
I have 6 in my attic.
And if you follow Bacon's advice, you're going to be spending a fair bit of money. Artists are poor and starving not because they don't make any money, we're poor and starving because we have to spend most of our money on art supplies!
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Disagreein' with this- I would really caution against trying to get her paint or paint brushes unless you actually know what she uses/wants, because that's an area where you can really easily go wrong, much, much more than with basic drawing supplies. (Does she even paint, for one thing?)
Pick up paint in a medium she doesn't use? Won't get used. Pick up brushes designed for a medium she doesn't use? Won't get used. Pick up cheap paint, or a brand with handling qualities she doesn't like? Won't get used. Pick up cheap brushes? She'll just keep using the ones she's got. (and nightlife, you really shouldn't need to constantly be buying brushes unless you're always needing new sizes/types, otherwise it means you're either buying cheap ones, or wrecking them by not maintaining them properly-good brushes should last a good long while.)
Beyond all that, decent painting supplies are not cheap. When I started taking an oil painting class I ended up having to plonk down somewhere in the area of $150 just for the brushes/paints/solvents/palette/etc. just to get started; so unless you're rich/extremely generous, you really don't want to start down that road unless you know for sure she'll actually use it (don't expect the people that work at Michael's to be experts, either).
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You must have missed the part where I said "But yeah, really it comes down to what she uses the most and getting her that."
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Hmm that's okay. But as an artist myself I would give a beginner a very different list than what I personally use. I wouldn't be giving a dude who just graduated from finger painting my recommendation to drop serious change on a brush set similar to mine for example.
Quality and archival quality comes at a premium, especially if you don't know where you can cut corners.
I'd go with some charcoal (see if you can find a brown/white/black set. Yeah the others aren't technically charcoal but it'll be in the same section.) some pencils of different hardness and some paper. I'm guessing she's not moving in so a visit won't warrant anything more than that.
Set a budget for her and make her present be a trip for both of you to the art supply store where she can pick out all the things she wants to build her kit. This way you have fun together while shopping and she gets the gift.
A trip to the art supply store for an artist is like a trip to the candy shop for a kid.
If you do get her a sketchbook for traveling, I highly recommend the Moleskine Sketchbook. Theres two types though. Make sure to get here the one with the thicker weight paper as its much nicer. I think its 80 - 100 lb paper. It can take paint/marker/even water colors and ink washes without warping.
http://www.amazon.com/Moleskine-Sketchbook-Large/dp/8883701151/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1309965991&sr=8-3
That is, if you can't get access to what she normally uses--I'd just chime in with everyone else against buying anything without knowing what she uses, because the risk is pretty high of getting stuff that will never see the light of day.
Hahaha, the irony here is that the one Moleskine I bought (admittedly not a large one you linked, so maybe I had different paper in it?) I didn't much care for, though I know a lot of people swear by them.
Thus the one thing we disagree on, serving as an excellent example of the overarching point (artists are picky, individualistic little wieners and who knows what they'll like.) :P
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That being the case, you could always make up a fake conversation-starter, or have one of the artists here give you one. Something like "I don't know anything about it, but a friend of mine was going on about the paints/markers/pencils/paper he uses and swore by [brand/type/etc.]" and see if you can get her ranting about the supplies she uses.
All of that failing, rather than buying travel supplies, travel containment for supplies might be a good bet. If you have some idea what she works with, you can go to an art store and say "My girlfriend does [type of art], and she travels, so I want to get her really good, reliable containment so that she can easily take her things with her." Maybe tiny posts for paint or something to keep pencils and paper neat. If you can find a case to contain what you get and it's metal, you might be able to get her initials engraved into it, or if it's wood, wood-burned.
Semi off topic, but what was the paper like? Was it thinnish? Not newsprint thin, but thin? Or was it almost cardstock like thickness? Because thats the one I like.
Despite having three of the thin ones
Spoilering this so as not to derail the thread too much:
My problem with it was that it was almost too high quality for what I use sketchbooks for; you put some real high quality paper in a real neat looking self-contained package, and I wind up psyching myself out trying to make sure what I draw is worthy of it, rather than just, you know, drawing in it. But then, if I'm going to do super-high quality labored over drawing, I'd rather do it on a nice big sheet of bristol instead of in a tiny 3"x5" (or whatever it was) sketchbook. (Maybe I should dig it out and use it for gouache studies, and see if I like it better for that?)
The drawings in my sketchbook are generally just for my eyes only- I just go and attack whatever problems I'm working on in a rough, fast and loose way which may or may not make sense to anyone other than myself. I'm not one of those guys where every line they dash off sings with clarity and rhythm- I more just beat my drawings into submission just by sheer ugly brute force, drawing after drawing until it looks like something.
So my criteria for what I want in a sketchbook is: lots of pages, smoothish texture + medium weight paper, pages that can be torn out cleanly (whether it's because of a drawing turning out very well or because a drawing just sucks and I need to toss it in the garbage can), spiral binding, fits on my lap in a comfy manner when I'm at my computer desk. The Moleskin is like a Mercedes S-Class, very nice and refined- but in my case what I need to get the job done is more like a Toyota pick-up truck, because I know it's going to be hauling around a lot of bullshit.
If I was one of those cats whose sketchbooks were front to back nothing but brilliant drawings, like they could ship it off to a publisher's and have them duplicate it as is and ship it out as an artbook (they're out there and they make me jealous as hell), I'd probably spring for something like a Moleskine. But since I'm painfully aware that I'm not that dude, something more like the Canson pad I linked earlier suits me better.
Again, the fact that I can put together that many words about something as seemingly inconsequential as sketchbook choice illustrates the difficulty of buying art supplies for somebody else :P. (Big reach there to bring this back on topic.)
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