Resources: Poll about art supplies

[mekare]

Hey all, sorry for being so absent last week. I'm back and off to comment on all your wonderful Inktober posts in the next couple of days.
ETA: I decided to make a poll. Sorry if the answer options a kinda dumb, it's my first poll ever.

Poll #18995 Art supplies

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

Where do you get your art supplies?

View Answers

local art supply shop
11 (68.8%)

online art supply shop (which?)
4 (25.0%)

get them as birthday/Christmas gifts
3 (18.8%)

a subscription service (artsnacks, scrawlrbox...)
1 (6.2%)

amazon
5 (31.2%)

ebay
0 (0.0%)

other (please put info in the comments)
5 (31.2%)

Where do you get your information about art supplies?

View Answers

Manufacturer sites
2 (12.5%)

Customer reviews in online shops
3 (18.8%)

my local art supply store
2 (12.5%)

Artist friends
7 (43.8%)

Artist blogs (which?)
2 (12.5%)

Review blogs (which?)
0 (0.0%)

I usually just buy and try them out myself
9 (56.2%)

Other (please specify in comments)
7 (43.8%)

sexycazzy mentioned subscribing to one of those art supplies box services where you get a mixed bag of art supplies each month, I think earlier there was a post or a comment about a service like that in the US (and after a brief search I realized there a a lot of services like that out there). So, questions:

1. Who here has (is being) using a service like that and what on earth do you do with the supplies that pile up? Since you don't know beforehand what you'll get, I'm imagining there's supplies left and right that aren't being used.

2. Do you have recommendations for sites where supplies are being reviewed (apart from amazon which is obvious)? Of course, I have my local stationary store I use for the basics (it has reduced price on Schmincke watercolours at the moment which is fantastic). For the rest I use a German online art supplier. Unfortunately its site is pretty light on the customer reviews.I'm guessing I'm looking for your personal experiences with different supplies as well as trusted sites where I can believe the reviewers. That box-service is awfully tempting (and since I'm not a poor student anymore I could probably afford one) but I am hesitant to spend money when I'll have stuff here that's not getting used.

Oh right, I'm looking for ink stuff, pastels, watercolours and brushes mostly. And there probably are a lot of cool special effects tools out there that I don't even know exist.

Comments

[jainas]

I actually discovered most of the supplies I still use today as a student, or through looking at other's people work.
Paris is full of local art shops so I have no trouble dropping in one when I need something specific, but I also sometime impulse buy in art store I come across in foreign countries/cities (London and Bruxelles are the prime suspects here^^)




My most useful art supplies are :
- a travel box of watercolors my friends got me when I was in highschool. It got 12 colors and honestly I never needed more. For some years I took it everywhere and used it a lot, and even now it is extra useful.

- a Pentel Pocket Brush, black ink. My favorite tool ever, couldn't live without it.

- a water brush (a brush with an empty reservoir you can fill with water). Extra useful as well. The brand doesn't matter and it goes with the watercolors like a dream.

- Staedtler pigment liners : technical pens with waterproof ink. My most used tips are 0.3 and 0.5

Always good to have :
- Posca pens : paint markers, ubiquitously useful, be it for writing on boxes, on walls, or anywhere else. Waterproof once dry, you can go by with a couple of black ones, a red one, and maybe a white one (they are very good for covering mistakes on white paper!)

- Colorex inks : Bright, extracovering inks, waterproof once dry. All my brightly colored Inktober drawings have been made with mixes from just four inks : black, yellow, cyan, magenta. A bit hard to master, but the brightness of colors is soooo rewarding. I sometime use them to complement watercolors.

- couple of brush of different sizes, but I'm not very knowledgeable on the brands or the kind of brushes

Regarding notebooks, I used Moleskines for years and still do, but my favorite notebooks are from l'Orange Bleue : https://orange-bleue.fr/8-carnets
They do cheap, big, thick papered gorgeous drawing books. I used many, in many sizes, kind of paper and shapes, and always enjoyed them.
I'm actually doing my Inktober in what I thought was my last drawing book from them, leftover from my student years... Only it turns out I had a few more left! I was very happy when I found them. <3


Actually most of the inking stuff I use can be found here : http://mrjakeparker.com/tools

[mekare]

Hey thanks for your recommendations! I'm not sure I understand the purpose of the water brush. Do you just fill in water or also colour? If it's just for not having to dip the brush into the water glass I kind of don't see why that's a problem...

Is the Pentel waterproof and refillable? I am currently looking for a pen like that but want to have a refillable one (environmental reasons).

By the way your picture looks great! The Inktober logo turned out really well. :-)

[dirty_diana]

The water brush is generally for painting in spaces that are not your studio and you can't easily spread out or lug a huge setup around. Like the outdoors. :)

[mekare]

Ah thanks, that makes sense. Since I don't really work outdoors I can save me that money :-)

[jainas]

Like Dirty-diana said, the water brush is super useful outdoor or on a journey when you need to travel light... but I end up using it all the time even at home!

The Pentel is indeed both waterproof and refillable. ACtually I just changed my cartridge this morning!

Thanks! I realised after posting that the Inktober was missing a squiggle, it's all fixed now, but I'm too lazy to take a new picture! ^^
It's a good exemple of what you can do with a white posca as well! ^^

[mekare]

I ordered a Pentel brush and am very excited! And wow I thought you just left the writing white and coloured around it. So the Posca pen really works over true black?