For the past year, I acquired and tested new pens and art supplies that piqued my interest!
Many are impulse purchases, but I have found select pens that I want to stick in my utility belt of drawing tools! I have links to Jet Pens and Blick Art Supplies so you can get these pens for yourself!
Continue readingAs the year wraps up, I thought I’d share some of the tools that I’ve been using often to work on my art and art-related projects! The software I use is the similar to what I’m rocking before, but it doesn’t hurt to drop some new stuff I’m trying out too!
This is a simple 6×9 spiral-bound date book that I use to track my schedule. The pages are set up by week, so it makes it easy for me to plan it out. It’s portable to carry anywhere in my bags.
Together with this calendar, I also use black or blue Pilot G-2 Gel pens for general writing. The color packs are a great start to buy as well. From my daily tasks to my regular maintenance tasks to my annual events, I use various colors to organize the types of tasks I do.
Nice and simple leaves of paper help me with little notes that I need to add. When I fill my notebooks, sometimes I want to add other notes if I don’t have enough space. If I don’t want to erase what I already wrote, so I can use post-it notes. Sticky notes are also fantastic bookmarks for novels and calendar books. If you get them in different colors, you can even organize them by subject.
As of writing this, I have a day job, so I’m always on the go and never at my home studio. I keep having ideas but little time to draw them. With my SketchWallet, I can hold a sketchbook, credit cards, and cash in one spot, so I don’t need to fish for them. When you first buy the wallet, it comes with its own sketchbook from the start. Luckily, it can hold any other 3.5-inch by x 5.5-inch sketchbook inside.
My trusted mechanical pencil that I never need to sharpen! I have other sizes, but 0.5 mm is my best-feeling pencil. All the pencils have great lead capacity, so you don’t need to refill them as much. The side clip is a switch that retracts the tip of the pencil to save your point from breaking or stabbing you in the leg. Not having a large enough eraser can be a dealbreaker for other artists if you erase all the time. The next time might suit your needs.
Using my pencil’s eraser is a pain in the butt because it rubs down too short or pushes down into the lead barrel. The Tombow Mono Eraser is an eraser pen where it stores one long eraser. It’s cleaner to hold in my pocket than a kneaded eraser, and not as big to erase on like a white plastic eraser.
This is a mesh bag I use to stash my Copic Markers. It’s got a good zipper, and it’s sturdy enough to carry inside a larger backpack or by itself.
I got an iPad for the Procreate App and the potential of having a digital art setup to practice on. I wrote a review about my initial impressions along my first instances in the Procreate App! It took some getting used to, but over the year I got used to my iPad. I purchased more brushes for Procreate and I got apps like Pixaki, VisRef, and LumaFusion.
This USB 3.0 Flash Drive is a fantastic partner to my iPad. I can move files around my computer, phone, and pad with ease! I worry that it gets hot enough to be a problem. Even though it has 256 GB of space, I don’t rely on it too much for storage.
I began trying out Kdenlive around June on a lark. I was sick of dealing with Adobe Premiere’s issues, and I wanted to find alternatives. It was rocky at first, but after watching tutorials, I improved my video editing. The fact that this app accepts MKV files is a massive time saver! No more Remuxing VODs and I keep a higher quality video!
This is my personal list of things I currently used over the year to stay productive. It’s not perfect, but if you want something to start, you can try out what I have here. I keep a larger archive of my personal recommended tools on my Supply Page! I update it enough to have info that you can look at for your own art needs.