Beginner's Art Class Art Supplies

In many cases, your art instructor will have a list of items that you need to buy for art class. However, there are some items that you are almost guaranteed to need over the course of the art class.

Pencils Your teacher may have some ideas or suggestions about which pencils to use, but get a selection of grades, from hard to soft. Some projects will require darker or paler lines than others. What is known in the U.S. as the #2 pencil is known elsewhere in the world as an HB pencil. Art pencils are often graded using the letter system. H represents "hardness" and B stands for "black". An HB or #2 pencil, then, is the one that is relatively equal in hardness and blackness and considered medium on the grade scale. If you can only find numbered pencils, think H as in higher/harder or B as in below 2/blacker.

Paper It is nearly a certainty, depending on which art class you've chosen, that the professor will have requirements for specific paper or tablets. It is likely to be a notebook of paper at least 2 feet wide in either direction. However, you should also get yourself some sort of smaller sketching tablet. These are generally much less expensive and will allow you to hash out larger projects without wasting the larger stuff.

Erasers You should get several kinds of erasers. If this is your first art class, you should know that the pink caps you used in grade school are not going to be sufficient. You should buy some soft gum erasers and some harder ones. The most important thing to remember is to buy large ones and to buy several. You are going to make mistakes and some papers and pencils are more difficult to erase lines from than others.

Storage This is one thing your instructor probably won't put on the "to buy" list, but you are going to need it. Large sheets of drawing paper are unwieldy and have a serious tendency to flop and bend. This can ruin all your hard work in moments and is best avoided. You need, therefore, an art bag large and firm enough to accommodate your largest paper size that you can carry to and from class. You may also want to invest in a storage box of some kind for use at home, to protect your work from pets, children, pests, roommates, accidental spillage, and even dust.