When you are starting to sketch, the major and the foremost thing is the toolkit for sketching. Sketch acts as a soul when you are painting as it gives you a perspective or an idea of where you are heading to.
Sketching itself is the most beautiful thing, you just have to take care of the things which you put in the toolkit for sketching!
And as an artist, the material and tool that we chose during sketching becomes very important as it would majorly define our sketch.
And there is a noticeable connection between quality art materials and quality artworks and this is the reason, the emerging artist wants or desires to have the best materials possible.
And if you are serious about your artwork, then you should also get serious about the toolkit for sketching, that is the material that you use.
So, let’s start by knowing about the essentials included in the toolkit for sketching!
Essentials included in the toolkit for sketching:
- Quality drawing pencils: The pencil is the most essential thing in the toolkit for sketching. And there are various brands and different artists who connect with different brands.
Pencil sets: Pencil sets are the ones that are usually packaged and are great as they often include the full spectrum of graphite grades. The set may include harder graphite (9H) through softer graphite (6B).
There is a difference between them, in the harder graphite the marks that are made are lighter and it keeps a sharp tip longer, while the other one, the softer graphite marks a dark mark, but you need to sharpen it more often
The advantage of this set is that it gives the artist the ability to work with different values and varieties of marks.
Individual pencils: And many artists don’t use all the pencils in a given set of pencils instead, they use only a few of them and because of this purchasing a whole set would not be meaningful and they can just go for buying individual pencils as per their need.
- A Sketchbook: A Sketchbook is the most important thing in the toolkit for sketching. And that should be an “active sketchbook”, that is, the sketchbook that gets your attention.
A sketchbook should be durable and must contain many pages for your idea to be filled in, and it would be more advantageous if it has a hardcover, so that it can be maintained and stand out even after repeated use and travel.
- Quality drawing surfaces: The quality of the surface is very much important when you are sketching. And some of the tools that should be included in the toolkit for sketching are:
The “tooth”- The “tooth” refers to the texture of the paper as it plays an important role to define how the drawing material will be accepted on the surface.
As the heavier texture would be producing lines that would be appearing as broken one while the smooth texture will be producing smoother lines as well as gradations of value.
Paperweight- In this, the weight of the paper usually refers to how much that ream of the paper weighs. And in this, the weight of the the paper will be directly proportional to the thickness of the paper.
Drawing paper- It is a medium tooth paper, and when used with a variety of drawing media such as graphite, charcoal and coloured pencil, it will work excellent
Charcoal paper- It is a kind of heavier tooth paper, which is lightweight and almost semi-transparent. And when creating texture it is amazing.
- Erasers: Whenever we think about erasers, it comes to our mind as it is used to erase our mistakes. But in the toolkit for sketching, an eraser can be a great mark-making tool.
And different erasers can be used to create a variety of marks and used according to the specific drawing medium. There can be different kinds of erasers, rubber erasers, kneaded erasers, gum erasers and vinyl or plastic erasers.
- Good pencil sharpeners: Whenever we are talking about a toolkit for sketching, a quality sharpener should be added to it as pencils should be sharpened with a quality pencil sharpener.
As when you are using a poof quality sharpener, you could be out of pencil in a few matters of moments.
- Charcoal or Conté: No artist toolkit for sketching would b complete without charcoal or conté. As charcoal is useful as it provides a broader range of value and mark-making.
And the marks that are made are different. And charcoal can be in the form of a stick and pencil.
And stick can be in the form of a vine or compressed. In this, vine charcoal is softer and produces lighter marks and compressed charcoal is the one that is concentrated and produces darker marks. And charcoal pencil can be shsharpened like a graphite pencil.
Conté is very similar to charcoal majorly in the richness of colour.
- Drawing pens/ink: Whenever we are including drawing pens/ink in our toolkit for sketching, then we have to master the use of lines. For developing the illusion of forms, texture and light lines are used.
Technical drawing pens are much useful and great for all the budding artists out there as they are affordable, easy to find and portable.
So, for all the essentials you can go and search out the site “RangDe.studio”, to get all the necessities and know more about them!
And Sampratishta school of fine arts and design offers you all the amazing courses and deep-rooted knowledge about art and it’s related fields! What are you waiting for! Get started now!
Photo Credit: Kelly Sikkema
