Suggested Supplies

What supplies might we need or want?

We will be focussing on ink and pen techniques, with occasional (optional) watercolours as well.

As such, the required and suggested supplies are quite minimal and very flexible.

Doodling your supplies is a fun way to get inspiration, and develop your sketching.

You could literally get by with some office paper and a ball point pen, and you would still be able to complete all the workshops and I'm sure get a lot out of it.

Below is the short version of minimum and recommended implements, for more information you might also check out my website where all my frequent supplies are listed.

Minimum Suggested Supplies

  • Surface - good quality cartridge/sketching paper, or a sketchbook, A4 (UK) or Letter (USA) in size

  • Drafting implement - any pencil, any eraser

  • Sketching implement - a waterproof fineliner, or a sketching fountain pen (a cheap option is a 'Platinum Preppy')

  • Ink - A waterproof ink, such as platinum carbon X ink

Optional/Recommended Supplies

  • Surface - personally, I prefer sketching on watercolour paper, I don't have a strong brand preference but usually use 300gsm cold pressed paper, A4/Letter in size

  • Drafting implement - a mechanical pencil, such as a Rotring Tikki, 0.5mm and a putty eraser

  • Sketching implement - my favourite is a fine tipped LAMY Safari

  • Ink - A waterproof ink, such as platinum carbon X ink

Additional/Experimental Supplies

In a couple of the workshop demonstrations, I will use things not listed here - the aim of these demonstrations are to show the fun of experimenting and I would not expect you to acquire all the individual tools that I use!

However, here is a list of everything else that I do use so you are aware :)

  • Workshop 1 - a blue watercolour pencil, a Pentel Brush pen (with pentel ink)

  • Workshop 5 - I use an 11x15inch piece of cold pressed watercolour paper (slightly larger than letter or A4), I also reuse my brush pen along with a cheap watercolour brush.

Watercolour Supplies

These are used briefly in Workshop 3 (Shapes and Structure) and in Workshop 5 (Loosening up).

The emphasis of this course is not the use of watercolours, however, in these lessons there are specific reasons why I branch out into some loose use of colour. If you have watercolours, then brilliant, if not then you will not be missing out on much!

For these, I would check my website - urbansketch.co.uk/supplies - this lists all my watercolours and brushes.