My Watercolour Supplies list

A material list of my favourites, as well as my recommendations.

Drawing Paper

Strathmore off-white paper
Medium Surface. This paper is cream-colored, eggshell-textured, and holds up well for both shading and block-in sketches. Use this paper for sketches. 

Vellum Tracing Paper
This is tracing paper. Vellum can also be painted on, but we won’t be doing that.

Strathmore Bristol Smooth 
Smooth surface is very important for final drawings.
Thick, bright white, very smooth paper: Use this paper only for highly finished drawings: 

You won’t need to buy bristol paper for watercolour drawings, printer paper or any smooth cheap drawing paper is fine. If you can’t find a specific brand, you can just use printer paper with a very smooth surface.

Painting  Paper

Advanced level artist.

Arches 300gm cold pressed 

Arches 300gsm hot pressed smooth

Arches is a high quality and rather expensive paper. Not best for beginners wanting to practice, mainly because you will waste a lot of expensive paper. If you have the money, go for it 🙂  but for everyone else, we tend to use “cheaper” paper initially until we’re confident. It can be good to start learning with the best, but realistically that is not always feasible. See below for beginner paper options. 

Beginner

Fabriano Studio Hot Press 

This is a much more affordable paper, and therefore is a lower quality – naturally. 

It is only 25% cotton and is not Acid Free. The effect this has is 1) lower cotton means that it is easier to overwork the paper 2) acid may interfere with the tone of color and your color may fade over time. Not ideal for ARTWORKS, but great for practicing and learning. 

I have an entire blog post on Watercolour Paper here. 

Paint

Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolor Tubes

Great high quality paint – a little goes a long way and definitely worth the investment. 

Paper will be your highest expense. Paint is much less of an expense, once you have the colour, you probably wont have to buy it again in a few years. 

Brushes

da Vinci Watercolor Series 5240 Deluxe Paint Brush Set

Great all rounder brush set of high quality brushes – Made from natural Kolinsky red sable hair. 

Great sizes – from fine details to medium blending to large washes. 

Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky 

The number #0 to #4 brushes are my absolute favorite. They are luxuriously thick and plump for their size and hold a good amount of water, given their relative size. They’re great for blending fine details. My go to brush for detailed botanical work. 

To start off you will need 1 small brush (#0 or #1) and one larger brush #4 – the da Vinci box has everything you would need. 

Pencils

Derwent Graphic Pencils  

Faber-Castell Polychromos Coloring Pencils

Tools

Masking Fluid

Faber-Castell  kneaded Erasers  

Paper stretching tape

Other

MEEDEN 6-Drawer Artist Supply Storage Box  

What is next?

Head over to my Patreon for video lessons.