Painting & Drawing
Professional Watercolour Paint Set - This is the set I have and love. I have bought other colours by the tube as needed/wanted. You can refill the pans from tubes.
Gouache paint Set - This is a good starter set of colours which you can add to as you like
Acrylic Gouache Set - I use these to paint onto gold (as an alternative to oil paint). They are opaque like gouache but you can easily layer them.
Brushes - I have a very ragtail collection of brushes, from fine sables to cheap acrylic ones, chinese brushes and liners. Here are a few of the ones I go to most often.
Multi-pack of inexpensive acrylic round tips, mostly I just use the small ones - https://amzn.to/46SR729
Multi-pack of teeny tiny round tips - https://amzn.to/4cpWcjS
Chinese Calligraphy Brushes, lovely for loose paintings - https://amzn.to/3X8sxaA
Round tip sable brushes, good brushes but more expensive - https://www.jacksonsart.com/winsor-and-newton-series-7-kolinsky-sable-brushes
Colouring Pencils - Polychromos are my favourites, here are a couple of options.
https://amzn.to/4dLSF0l - Prismacolor 36 piece set
https://amzn.to/3AC9a0w - Faber-Castell 120 piece set (expensive but amazing)
Oil Paints - You get what you pay for with oil paint, my preference is Winsor & Newton Artists' Oil Colour. The Artits' range have more pigments in them than less expensive versions. You only need a few basic colours from which you can mix almost any shade. This is a nice starter set.
Varnish for Oil Painting - Oil paints take a long time to dry, but by making a varnish which you can mix with the paints (used the way you would water with watercolours), you can reduce the drying time to about 24 hours.
Make a 50:50 mix of white spirit and oil based extra pale varnish like this one:
Drafting Film - I use this rather than paper when creating with polychromos pencils.
Watercolour Paper - I have tried and used several different paper makes, this one is my favourite and go to. It's also reasonably priced.
Tracing Paper - always useful to have. I have a big roll but I can't remember where I got it from. I have used this in the past and it's good.
Light Pad - To remove the tracing paper stage, but useful for other things too. I recommend an A3 one.
Disposable Paint Palette - very handy for numerous paint jobs, except watercolour (I use a cermaic plate or palette for those)
Putty Rubber - Great for softening pencil lines. This one's very kneadable.
Fine Liner - I love these as they don’t bleed when painted over. The 0.3 is my go to but it can be handy to other sizes too.
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