Over the past couple years I have been on instagram, I've had a lot of people ask me what kind of pens, paint, paint brushes, pencils etc. do I use in my work. For awhile now I have wanted to post something on my blog about this...but just never got around to it. So, today I am finally sharing with you my favorite artist tools and where you can buy them. I hope the pictures and information are helpful in describing their application. :)

Below is a picture of the majority of pens, pencils, markers, paints etc. that I use on a daily basis. The picture is really large so if you click on it, you will be able to read all the notes I have typed up on there.  My fountain pens I get from jetpens.com my muji pens I get from muji.com/usa and the rest of the stuff either from Dick Blick, Utrecht or Michaels craft store. Something that I need to mention is paper. Your paint, pencil weight, markers...will all look different on different paper. Don't skimp on good paper...my favorite to paint and draw on is marker paper, bristol [cold press] and Parsons Paper 11x15" white from davinciartistsupply.com

A lightbox is the best investment EVER! Before getting art supplies, get a lightbox! There are so many to choose from, Amazon is a great place to look [the art supply stores charge quite a bit] but this will help you finesse your drawings. You can use tracing paper obviously to ink your work, but these are a 100x better.  And if you or someone you know is interested in drawing/ designing...whatever, this would be the first thing I would buy...THEN if they are using it at least a couple times a week [getting your money's worth] then I would go and start getting some supplies. 

Application:

Before going to Parsons I ausually just bought cheap art supplies.  I soon learned that you do get what you pay for...so biting the bullet and investing in the good stuff needed to happen.  However, I cringe when I see people who want to start a new hobby, go out and buy all the best stuff... as if having the nicest supplies will produce amazing work for you. If you're just starting out... I suggest only purchasing a few of these materials [EVEN IF you can afford to buy the whole store] starting out with just a few items will help relieve you of any anxiety you may feel in the beginning. You don't need every color in the rainbow, only white, black, red, blue, yellow... but I would even just stick with white, black and your favorite color and just work with that for a little while. Same goes for colored pencils, pens, paint brushes etc. 

In the Fashion Dept. at Parsons we were required to produce a collection every 1-2 weeks and then once we edited those down, we then had to make "Finishes" [what you see below] of the looks you chose to keep in your collection. Each collection had to come with fabric swatches, so you could better understand the feel, silhouette, color of what you created. Another thing we could include in our collection were "Treatments" this was small samples of beadwork, knitting, painted leather...basically we could make anything that would help overall with people understanding what the outfit was supposed to look like. This was my favorite part, but often time consuming.

A few of my finishes from different collections:

 I thought it would be fun to show you most of this collection below that was inspired by sea anemones with an Art Deco vibe. 

Every collection needs a moodboard

I normally kept my swatches in a square or rectangular form, but for this one I wanted them to have a more organice, sealife essence to them, hence the scalloped edge.

These are some of my treatments for the collection. Hopefully you can tell what outfit

they are apart of?  :)

Closeup up the collection. Lots of gouache, pencil and colored pencil were used to help convey the type of fabric, beadwork, texture etc.

I hope I'm not leaving anything out... but if you have any questions or suggestions, comment below and I will be sure to respond. :) Hope this was helpful for some of you? Next week I hope to post a tour of our studio on here.... xo :)