The Best Art Supplies for any Mixed Media Artist

I feel that being an artist comes with a great love of art supplies. There’s probably not many feelings better then walking into an art supply shop, where all the paints and pencils line the shelves - I’m personally known for taking quite a while in there, browsing absolutely everything!

In my artistic practice I have never wanted to stick to just one art supply, meaning that I have always worked with mixed media. Maybe this is because I am too indecisive to choose just one material to work with? Instead I love experimenting with different textures and marks that each different art supply can bring, along with seeing how they all work together. So in this blog post (my very first one of this new blog), I would love to share my favourite art materials that I have discovered over the years.

Caran Da’che Necolor II Aquarelle

Sketchbook time with Caran Da’che Necolour II Aquarelle

These Caran Da’che Neocolors are a recent addition to my art materials collection - but they are the best thing ever. These Neocolors are wax pastels that create so many nice textures to play with and form such vibrant colours. The small selection that I own are in fact Neocolors II Aquarelle, which means that they are water soluble. This means that like watercolours, they can be activated with water, leading to even more textures and variations to experiment with. I am definetly hoping to expand my small selection of Necolors very soon.

Brusho Inks

Hamish the Highland Cow by Hannah Robinson using Brusho Inks in the sky

No background of mine is complete without a good share of Brusho Inks. I was first introduced to them in high school, but I have been using them ever since. They come in containers, containing the dry powder, which once water is added, becomes these very pigmented water inks across the page of your paper. I love how unpredicatable they are, you just never quite know how exactly they will react and that prospect is always exciting.

I ususally use them in the beginning stage of my work as a background base in certain areas, which I briefly mentioned before. In particular, Brusho Inks form my bright blue and inky skies, enjoying the way that they react to the water by themselves.

Inks and Pipettes

Little Panda by Hannah Robinson with a background created with inks and pipettes

Once I have created a sky formed of Brusho Inks, whilst this is still wet, I often add droplets of coloured ink with a pipette, allowing this to bleed into the space too. I also find that adding ink droplets to backgrounds is perfect to create a bit more variety and interest to the base of a illustration. For example, when illustrating a floral scene, I love to add droplets of different shades of green ink, which contribute to the greenery surrounding the wildflowers. Some inks come with a pipette, such as Daler Rowney Acrylic Ink (a firm favourite of mine), but for other inks, it’s great to have a spare pipette to really be able to achieve those droplets of ink.

Acrylic Paints and Palette Knifes

Arnside Viaduct by Hannah Robinson, clouds created with acrylic and a palette knife

Applying acrylic paints with a palette knife leads to some of the best texture ever, which you can really build up to be quite thick too. I only really use these materials for one thing, which is clouds. Once the background of my sky formed of Brusho Inks and ink droplets is completely dry, I go in with white acrylic paint, applying it with a palette knife. It’s great how some areas you can apply just a little, almost scraping it across the page, but in other areas, you can have it built up heavily, creating an entirely different effect.

Fineliners and Posca Pens

Hebridean Machair by Hannah Robinson, linework created with fineliner and Posca Pens

It’s often a debate in the art world, whether or not black outlines are acceptable. I am personally a big fan of some good linework and I also believe that you should focus on creating work that you love (you can’t please everyone)! Linework is essential to my work, allowing me to add so much detail and depth. They are incredibly useful for when it comes to adding areas built up of lots of tiny dots too.

Fineliners are perfect for adding small details, coming in such a range of sizes too. The smallest one I own is 0.05mm, going all the way up to 0.8mm, enabling me to achieve variety in my linework. Alongside these fineliners, I often use Posca Pens too, which are paint markers. If a particular area of a piece contains a lot of coloured pencils or gouache for example, it can often be quite hard to go over it with fineliner pens. This is where Posca Pens come in, they really will draw over any surface.

The only essential thing to remember when adding linework is that you must make sure that the pens are waterproof once dry if you want to add a wet medium over the top after - otherwise it will bleed absolutely everywhere!

There we have it - five of my favourite art supplies for artists looking towards working with mixed media. I do obviously use other art supplies too, such as watercolours, but in this blog post I wanted to share art supplies that I use that are slightly different, which bring texture and interest to my work. Thank you so much for reading, I hope to see you again very soon.