What art supplies inspired you the most?

[K5Rakitan]

I'm wondering what stuff to buy for my son, or at least what to browse and keep an eye out for good deals on. I like to stock up on things when I find good prices. My kid is 2, so most of this stuff won't be used anytime soon, but I have a shelf in my office where I'm storing things for later.

 

[Omnifarious]

I am just a low-level commoner so...
faber castell kits...

 

[Generic.Archdemon]

faber castell kits...

Yes

 

[Poleg]

I'm wondering what stuff to buy for my son, or at least what to browse and keep an eye out for good deals on. I like to stock up on things when I find good prices. My kid is 2, so most of this stuff won't be used anytime soon, but I have a shelf in my office where I'm storing things for later.

Pencils and normal paper.

 

[Omnifarious]

Yes

Well~~~ might as well....

 

[Empyrea]

If he's two, then I'd suggest colored paper. It's prettier to look at and at that age it will be difficult to use fine drawing tools. One thing that my kids liked when they were little, was when I'd rub black crayon on colored paper. They'd scratch it out with a screwdriver, which they found cool because it was their dad's.

 

[Ilikewaterkusa]

I'm wondering what stuff to buy for my son, or at least what to browse and keep an eye out for good deals on. I like to stock up on things when I find good prices. My kid is 2, so most of this stuff won't be used anytime soon, but I have a shelf in my office where I'm storing things for later.

Just don’t let him go to art school.

 

[Agentt]

Origami paper!

 

[Syringe]

We gave pens to our little brother who's 2 yrs old now.

Stuff like this is good for children. It's non-toxic and fun for our brother. But not for us. Because we once had white walls. Now everything's painted picturesque. I take inspiration from the nightmarish entities the little devil conjures on our walls.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

If it was before 2019, I might have recommend you Acrylic paint. Or poster paint, at least.

Because When I was a child, I have easier time learning painting with Acrylic instead of watercolor or oil paint.

******

But today, it's already 2020-ish era.
These things is a cool thing to use for drawing :

COPIC markers

It's a far better alternative that easy to learn like pencil color, and can give very good results with practices.

there's no need for preparations for the paint pallette and brush. Just open the cap and draw already.

The best part about COPIC is Blending color. It can give very good result like these :

Look at those blending, they're very smooth unlike color pencil who still looks grainy when being blended.

*****
Well, COPIC is expensive.

And there's lots of alternative, like those Chinese package full of variety that were far cheaper than a mere pack of 12 original COPIC.

The problem is, they're far worse than COPIC. The advantage of COPIC is how easy it was to Blend, but these fake-cheap marker is just bad to blend.

It ends up just like regular marker with 108 color instead of proper painting marker like COPIC.

And I'm not going to tell you why you need to stick to the original COPIC, it's too expensive.

I simply want to tell you which cheap alternative is better and not suck at blending.

Look for these brands :

-> Artezza

-> Ohuhu

-> Touch (just "touch", with "Shinhan" or "Shinhan Touch" brand. "Touch U", "Touch New", etc. is to be avoided)

 

[tiaf]

If it was before 2019, I might have recommend you Acrylic paint. Or poster paint, at least.

Because When I was a child, I have easier time learning painting with Acrylic instead of watercolor or oil paint.

******

But today, it's already 2020-ish era.
These things is a cool thing to use for drawing :

COPIC markers

View attachment 17006

It's a far better alternative that easy to learn like pencil color, and can give very good results with practices.

there's no need for preparations for the paint pallette and brush. Just open the cap and draw already.

The best part about COPIC is Blending color. It can give very good result like these :
View attachment 17007
View attachment 17008

Look at those blending, they're very smooth unlike color pencil who still looks grainy when being blended.

*****
Well, COPIC is expensive.

And there's lots of alternative, like those Chinese package full of variety that were far cheaper than a mere pack of 12 original COPIC.

View attachment 17009
The problem is, they're far worse than COPIC. The advantage of COPIC is how easy it was to Blend, but these fake-cheap marker is just bad to blend.

It ends up just like regular marker with 108 color instead of proper painting marker like COPIC.

And I'm not going to tell you why you need to stick to the original COPIC, it's too expensive.

I simply want to tell you which cheap alternative is better and not suck at blending.

Look for these brands :

-> Artezza

-> Ohuhu

-> Touch (just "touch", with "Shinhan" or "Shinhan Touch" brand. "Touch U", "Touch New", etc. is to be avoided)

If you want to have perfect blend then:

Well~~~ might as well....

Alcohol markers need patience and good tutorials to reach shown results. Better wait till smol boi is 10 years or older before introducing to alcohol markers.

Why nobody suggest watercolor? And please not those cheap office supply. It doesn’t have to be expensive brands like Schmincke.
Watercolor pens are also fun to color with.

Alternatively there are also colored inks. Similar to watercolor but because you do not need water in excess it dries faster.

 

[Rhaps]

I used to have those oil color stick. I used to sit down in my room after school, turning off my brain and draw whatever I was feeling. At the end, my hands would always be stained from blending those colors with my fingers.
I still do it to today, my thumbnails may be using AI art, but I threw in my old drawings from way back as a basis. It's fun seeing what AI thinks and how it make sense of what I was thinking back then.

 

[tiaf]

Don’t forget clay!!! The hands will be dirty, but mind will have fun.

 

[melchi]

Are crayons an option?

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

If you want to have perfect blend then:


Alcohol markers need patience and good tutorials to reach shown results. Better wait till smol boi is 10 years or older before introducing to alcohol markers.

Why nobody suggest watercolor? And please not those cheap office supply. It doesn’t have to be expensive brands like Schmincke.
Watercolor pens are also fun to color with.

Alternatively there are also colored inks. Similar to watercolor but because you do not need water in excess it dries faster.

@K5Rakitan

Watercolor Sucks.
I almost forgot that.

Acrylic paint is all the way !! (Or at least poster color if you're too stingy with your kid).

For a child, It's easier to use Acrylic paint than Watercolor, because you can combine color with the same logic on color pencil and crayon.

I have tried Watercolor when I was a kid, and it Sucks.

It's definitely good when you're taught by a lovely-kind-and-honest art teacher, like another normal child.

But if you're a self taught 7yo with no friend, no YT video, and no teacher in 2000' era, Watercolor is HELL.

***
Arc 1
WHY Watercolor is HELL
​

Let me introduce you,

I'm a 7yo boy,
My parent is poor and busy,

I'm quite good with pencil and color-pencil, even when self taught.

I use color pencil and it fits the job perfectly. It give colors where I want to. Sometimes you have to Sharpen it, but it's okay. Still, I'm Kinda unlucky that there's no good pencil color expert to teach me side-grip, lightning/shadow, and gradient.

But I diligently put colors where it should be. This chair is dark brown no.12, the floor is white no.4, and the sky is light blue no.25. I can even erase it when necessary, since I like to keep my coloring tidy even when I was a kid.

Then I tried crayon, and it covers lots of area easily. But it's just Messy, so oily and greasy. My tidy drawing suddenly full of grease and my hand is even dirtier. I gave it up and just Donate to other children in need.

But one day, my frustrations with Crayon is going to be a mere anoyyance compared to the hell I would face soon.

Watercolor

It's very hard to understand.

I thought it was a mere paint I see on TV, just Pour it on pallette, Dip the brush on the paint, and just go smear it on the paper.

I was wrong.

After you smear, it's very hard to spread on the brush. And after giving it water, dip the brush, and start painting the my drawing, it didn't get as much color as I wanted.

I want solid color, but always get too light, the water seeping into the paper didn't help.

I tried again, but now with the solid red color I want, there's just too much water. I tried to smear it, but the water on paper just goes haywire while the paint follow. The part of drawing I want to color with red didn't get the color it needs. It's just muddy.

Now My table started to get messy with water, since 7yo isn't that good in controlling mess, but smart enough to know that It's parent will get angry later.

But I still stubbornly continue because need to get the damn color in the brush.

I tried again, without rinsing the brush before using other color (yellow). How the fuck an isolated 7yo supposed to know better ?? The color messed up and turning into a darker color I don't know.

I also tried mixing color like yellow and blue, and instead of the green I know, it turned into very very dark green that I didn't want.

All my logic I learned after using color pencil simply didn't work. Even the ones I learn while watching some TV show about painting also didn't work, since I saw he used oil paint/acrylic/poster, idk, but the one on tv can combine blue and yellow to proper green .

After frustrating session of botched painting and cleaning up, I gave up.

Of course that's wrong !!
Thats not how you paint with watercolor !!
What's wrong with you !!
Haven't nobody kick your ass to give you the lesson !!

Yep !! exactly !!
NOBODY TEACH ME !!

After hours of frustrating hour Fiddling with watercolor yesterday, I dont use it anymore since it keeps messing up with my hours of sketches.

I sacrifice some of my sketches to be painted with watercolor, and it ruins them all. Can't be bothered to save it or fix it with color pencil.

It's traumatic for my childhood.

***
Arc 2
Acrylic paint is Easy
​

Years later, I got assignment for using poster color.

But the shop near me didn't supply poster color, so I bought acrylic instead (since it's supposed to be more paper friendly than oil paint).

And after I tried acrylic paint, oh boy.

All of the frustration I felt with Watercolor just gone away.

Things I felt with Acrylic paint :

• Color mixing works correctly
• Smearing is easy even without water
• Controlling paint within border is easy
• Color is more solid
• And it last longer than Watercolor

I can mix color easily, and I can just focus smearing the paint instead of worrying about the leaking water drying or spreading everywhere.

Sure water is gonna help, but it's very solid as it is without water. It simply work as you expect it to be, no freakin complex & logic breaking rules that you need to learn if you're coming from pencil color.

Later on my school teacher said that I bought an too expensive paint. He said that I need to just buy poster color and so I buy one.

A little harder to use than acrylic, but still good choice. Still, I ended up using acrylic more compared to poster color.

That's my personal experience, before finally I gave in to digital drawing years later and get hit with depression right afer becoming adult officially.

***
Arc 4
Conclusion
​

For the love of your child, don't give him watercolor.

Unless you have Teacher in mind/you're gonna teach him yourself, it's going to be extremely hard to learn himself.

Especially if he's already used to color pencil and crayon. Watercolor logic is so frustrating without parent to guide.

Just give him acrylic paint, good brush, and good sketchbook/drawing book/drawing paper with thick material.

Or just use COPIC. It's considered watercolor (or alcohol to he exact), but the results is very controllable, Unlike watercolor that goes everywhere and make a whole mess if nobody teach your kid.

***
Extra​

A little tidbit,

When I read "The Magic of Thinking Big: David J. Schwartz", there was a story that resonate with me the most.

There was a parent whose kid is quite talented with painting, But the kid never joined any painting contest for kids.

Why ?

Because the kid uses Acrylic paint instead of watercolor paint. there's no competition for kids that have acrylic paint category (back then, probably ?)

The kid itself already said that Acrylic paint is easier to use, and it give him more freedom to paint compared to the restrictive watercolor that's kids usually uses.

His parent usually talks to his colleagues about why his kid is better at painting, and when he told other parent that his kid uses Acrylic, the other simply said it's too expensive for their kids.

Even tho the other parent he met usually have more salary than him. But they can't be bothered to help their kids with better type of paint just because they consider it "too expensive" for their kids. even tho it's clearly not going to break the bank at all.

***​

Bonus cookies for those who read till the end :

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Canvas

 

[TheEldritchGod]

Fresh road tar on a hot summers day.

Im told at the ripe old age of 3 I figured out how to stack boxes, flip over the baby gate, pull the drawers out in the kitchen to make stairs, climbed up on the counter to open the garage door, then, because we left the garage door open for the cat, I escaped the house to go play with the fresh tar spread on the road by popping the tar bubbles then slept the rest of the morning away in a ditch.

I inspired the police force in three counties to look for me.

Apparently I screamed the whole time they spent trying to scrub all the tar off me and had to shave me.

I went from being blonde that day to having hair as black as night. It grew black black and straight for some reason.

And yes, I have baby pictures of me with blond currly hair. Quite disturbing.
..
To clarify, we had a tube that went under our driveway so water in the ditch could flow under it. I though it was a nice cool place to take a nap and slept through the cop cars pulling in the driveway over me.

 

[tiaf]

After you smear, it's very hard to spread on the brush. And after giving it water, dip the brush, and start painting the my drawing, it didn't get as much color as I wanted.

That's because the pigmentation of those watercolors must have been bad.

What I meant with watercolor is the aquarelle kind. Those have high pigmentation, even the cheapest kind has workable color concentration. All the named brands only need a small dip to get vibrant colors. Cheaper brands naturally will be dull in comparison.

Alternatively, using gouache will also have properties similar to acrylic and it is washable with water.

Still, instead of normal colored pencils, give the child aquarell pencils. They are much more vibrant than normal colored pencils and they can be blend with a bit of water when needed.

 

[Cipiteca396]

ub black crayon on colored paper. They'd scratch it out with a screwdriver, which they found cool because it was their dad's.

I don't know if it's cheaper to do it homemade like that, but I did enjoy playing with those things as well. Charcoal tracings were fun as well. Just hold paper over something textured and scrape at it with the charcoal.

My kid is 2, so most of this stuff won't be used anytime soon, but I have a shelf in my office where I'm storing things for later

I might be weird, but I didn't want to use expensive stuff because I thought the pencils and such were prettier than what I could make with them.

So my advice is crayons, reusable pens/markers, and coloring books/tracing paper. The coloring books guarantee a better result than stickman joe and I learned some neat shading techniques for crayons in daycare by coloring line art.

Also, for the love of all that's good, don't scold the kid for tracing. Tracing is such a good way to improve hand-eye coordination... And plagiarism really shouldn't be a concern for a child to worry about.

 

[K5Rakitan]

That's because the pigmentation of those watercolors must have been bad.

What I meant with watercolor is the aquarelle kind. Those have high pigmentation, even the cheapest kind has workable color concentration. All the named brands only need a small dip to get vibrant colors. Cheaper brands naturally will be dull in comparison.

Alternatively, using gouache will also have properties similar to acrylic and it is washable with water.

Still, instead of normal colored pencils, give the child aquarell pencils. They are much more vibrant than normal colored pencils and they can be blend with a bit of water when needed.

Good to know! I do remember a big difference between the cheap Crayola watercolor set and the compact pocket watercolor set my dad gave me where the paints were all in square compartments instead of oval compartments with lots of space between the colors. I was thinking of letting my kid play with some cheap watercolors in the bathtub now-ish and presenting him with a nicer watercolor set when he's 5 or so.

Yep !! exactly !!
NOBODY TEACH ME !!

Thanks for all that info! I will certainly keep that in mind. My grandmother taught art for a while, and my dad took a class from her. She gave him a B because she couldn't possibly give her own son an A. I'm pretty sure my dad taught me about watercolors before I could remember the words he used to teach me, so I'm not sure what exactly to tell my son, but my dad is still around, and I'm sure we can pull up some Youtube videos for more advanced instruction.

I think the brushes make a huge difference as well. Those cheap plastic brushes that come with the Crayola set are complete garbage . . . unless you are just a toddler experimenting with colors and not really focusing on painting a picture.

Also, for the love of all that's good, don't scold the kid for tracing. Tracing is such a good way to improve hand-eye coordination... And plagiarism really shouldn't be a concern for a child to worry about.

I think that's a big reason why I didn't get more into art myself. I was big into tracing in sixth grade, but I didn't have lots of tracing paper to work with. I got frustrated because I didn't have all the tools I wanted. I remember trying to make my own tracing table with a flashlight, but I never got it stable enough because I didn't feel like it was something my parents would approve of if I asked for help with that.