This week the topic is my favourite tools! Learn about what paint brushes, pencils, markers, water colour pencils and ball point pens I love and why!
Paint Brushes
It’s really hard to find an ethical paint brush when you’re vegetarian. I don’t use any that are made from animal hair. This is something that is really important to me! I only use synthetic brushes. It’s hard to get a ‘rough’ look to your paint with synthetic brushes. So what I do is mess a couple up by scrubbing them hard into the canvas board or tissue paper. It messes the bristles up and you can get a much more natural effect for things like trees.
Spectrum Noir Markers
Alcohol Markers are becoming far more popular. They give a great deal of colour saturation with very little effort. They are especially good for fantasy art and animae drawings. Blending can be really difficult when you’re starting out with them. Paper plays an important role with alcohol Markers.
Graphite
This is the sketching set I’m using at the moment. They are fairly good, but next time I’ll be purchasing something that’s a little better quality. I find there isn’t a lot of difference between the hard leads and the softer pencils. This sometimes can make shading very difficult.
Watercolour Pencils
The below picture is of a print drawn in watercolour pencils. You can lay a lot of colour down to make things very rich and vibrant, or use a very light pressure and just add a wash of colour. The background in my dragon picture has a light blue wash. 
Graphik Line Markers – My all time favourite Markers. They come in various tip widths and are so easy to use. You do need to be carful when using them with water colours – make sure they are the last layer you put down. They tend to run!
I like to outline water colour pencil and graphite pencil sketches with these on occasion. I also like to sketch little designs with them.
Cheers,
Chrissy xxx
