Sketcher’s art supplies – markers, pencils and liners
Hello there,
As you may have noticed, I love sketching 🙂 And I recently received several questions regarding my markers and art supplies in general. Questions like “What are the names of these markers you use?” or “Why do you need so many?” So I decided to write a post about it.
I want to start with two things: one, I do not have a lot of markers. And the other is that these stationery items I will talk about in this post are only a small part of what I use when sketching. I will prepare another post about my sketchbooks, my storage system, and possibly my digital tools.
Basically, I keep these items in my case, except maybe markers. All of my markers will not fit in my pencil case, but I still do not think I have enough of them 🙂
Let’s start with my pencils. I usually draw with a small Kaweco Sport mechanical pencil with an HB lead. The main advantage of mechanical pencils is that you do not need to use a sharpener. On the other hand, I have heard that sharpening pencils is a kind of meditation for artists 🙂
Hatching with this mechanical pencil is not very comfortable, but I think it depends on the softness of the lead (remember the abbreviation on pencils: H, B, HB?). In any case, I do not hatch much, as I only use the pencil for outlines. But just in case I need shading, I have another mechanical pencil from Koh-i-noor Hardtmuth. Honestly, I bought this pencil because of its vintage look, but it is really useful for sketching as well.
Along with pencils I use erasers. I use them a lot 🙂
There is not much to say here, it is a regular Milan eraser that works very well and does not destroy the paper.
In addition to this eraser, I sometimes use erasers in pencils. I have a MONO zero from Tambow and one pencil from Koh-i-noor. These erasers are very helpful when you need to “tweak” something in a tight little space.
After my pencil sketch is done, I sometimes make an outline with liners (not always). I have several of them, here I presented Micron from Sakura 005 (very thin stroke), Liner from Touch (01 – thicker) Multiliner from Copic (03 – even thicker). I mostly draw with black liners, but it is good to have other colors as well. For example, I have been recently sketching with brown liner. And light grey liner is indispensable if you need to add contour, but so that it is not as bright as black line. And, of course, the best approach is to play with different colors and thickness of liners, because who knows what will be better for your artwork.
When the pencil and/or liner sketches are ready, I start using my markers. I decided not to write about markers here, because it would be better to prepare another post for this topic. I will just say that I am using Touch Twin markers, Copic markers, and Winsor & Newton promarkers.
As a finishing touch, I add white colors to the sketch. This is where white pencil and/or white acrylic markers come in! I have a regular white Stabilo pencil and Uni Posca and Yono acrylic markers. Mine Yono marker is pretty thick, so I use it rarely for big highlights. And my bullet shaped 0.7 mm Uni Posca is perfect for other smaller highlights and accents. The white Stabilo pencil is good if you do not want bright white on your sketch. It lays on markers well, but I think a watercolor or pastel white pencil would be better. I will have to check it out and will keep you posted 😉
Let me know if a post like this is useful to you and if this topic is worth continuing. Any feedback and questions are welcome in the comments! Thank you and have a great day.
-Tatiana