Art Supplies & Books

Updated May 2026—These are my favorite art supplies, books, and digital tools. Scroll down for more art supply categories. Bonus at the end: favorite artists, artist videos, and reference images! Affiliate links are marked with “*” symbol.

ART STUDENT SHOPPING LISTS

Note: I sometimes list several options for materials (no need to buy it all).

• Drawing — Student Supplies*

• Watercolor & Gouache — Student Supplies*

• Watercolor & Gouache — Professional Materials*

• Plein Air, Urban Sketching — Student Supplies*

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PAINTS & MEDIUMS — Watercolors, Acrylics, Gouache

• Golden Heavy Body Acrylics with Glazing Liquid*

• Golden Open Slow Drying Acrylics*

• Golden SoFlat Matte Acrylics*

• Holbein Gouache*

• QoR Watercolor Tubes*

• Winsor & Newton Gouache*

• Winsor & Newton Watercolor Tubes*

• Winsor & Newton Watercolors Pocket Set*

• Winsor & Newton Watercolor Blending Medium*

• Pigment info and lightfastness ratings

PAINTBRUSHES & PALETTES

• Blick Wonder White Acrylic & Watercolor Brushes*

• Princeton Aqua Elite Watercolor Travel Brushes*

• Richeson Plein Air Watercolor Travel Brushes*

• Richeson Butcher Tray Palette*

DRAWING MATERIALS — Pencils, pens, pastels

• Caran d’Ache Luminance Lightfast Colored Pencils*

• Caran d’Ache Neocolor II Water-Soluble Pastels*

• Caran d’Ache Supracolor Water-Soluble Colored Pencils*

• Colorless Blender Pencil*

• Drawing Workshop Supplies*

• Faber-Castell Polychromos Colored Pencils*

• Graphite Pencils, Various Tools*

• Prismacolor Nupastel Chalk Pastels*

• Sakura Gelly Roll White Pens*

• Sakura Pigma Micron Black Pens*

• Pigment info and lightfastness ratings

PAPERS

• Arches Cold Press Watercolor Paper*

• Pentalic 8 x 5-inch Watercolor Journal*

• Strathmore 400 Series Cold Press Watercolor Paper*

• Strathmore Visual Watercolor Journal*

• Strathmore Bristol Board*

• Strathmore Toned Gray Sketchbook*

• Strathmore Toned Tan Sketchbook*

• Yupo Synthetic Paper*

DIGITAL DRAWING & IPAD TOOLS

Woodland Wonderland digital brush set from Retro Supply Co.

• Anatomy For Sculptors 3D Models

• Digital Brush Sets by Retro Supply Co*

• Nomad Sculpt Digital Sculpting Tool

• Rock Paper Pencil iPad cover—Astropad (DISCOUNT CODE: zoungyart)*

• Watercolor Digital Brushes by Adilson Farias

• Woodland Wonderland Digital Brushes by Retro Supply Co*

• Zolly Perspective Tool by Proko*

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Art Bookshop

• My Bookshop.org Storefront*

• Painting & Drawing Books*

• Animation Books*

• Urban Sketching & Plein Air Books*

• Illustrated Children’s Books*

SELECT TITLES

• The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams*

• The Artist’s Guide to Sketching by James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade*

• Color and Light by James Gurney*

• How to Paint Landscapes Quickly and Beautifully in Watercolor and Gouache by Nathan Fowkes*

• Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling by John Muir Laws*

• Picture This by Molly Bang*

• Sketch! By France Belleville-Van Stone*

FREE BOOK SCANS

• Classic art books scans by Vintage Inkwell

• Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston

• Famous Artists Schools lessons

• Pastel & gouache guides by Lena Rivo

• Perspective guides by Paul Heaston

Note: Bookshop.org financially supports independent bookstores, giving back 80% of their profit margin.

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Bonus: Favorite Artists

Art by Blair, Robles, Pinkney, Blaukopf, Williford, Wyeth

• Mary Blair (top left) Mid-century designer at Walt Disney Productions.

• Gil Robles (top center) Gouache portrait artist.

• Jerry Pinkney (top right) Illustrator of The Lion and the Mouse

• Shari Blaukopf (bottom left) Urban Sketcher from Montreal.

• Ronnie Williford (bottom center) Watercolorist, printmaker, animator.

• Andrew Wyeth (bottom right) American watercolorist, tempera painter.

• Steven B. Reddy (below) Seattle urban sketcher, distorts proportion.

• Jeremy Miranda (below) Maine painter who paints realistic lighting.

• More artists are listed in the video section below.

Jeremy Miranda (detail)

Steven B. Reddy

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Bonus: Favorite Artist Videos

ARTIST VIDEOS—If I’ve mentioned an artist video in class, it’s probably here.

Sketching with Aaron Blaise—Aaron Blaise pages through his beautiful sketchbooks and shares the emotional reason behind his sketching habit:

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Persistance with Aaron Blaise—Aaron Blaise’s inspiring message about what to do when life keeps knocking you down:

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Classic animation history with Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston: Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life is a documentary based on the classic book by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Restored in 2025 by Borsu Highson:

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Graphite tricks with Dorian Iten—Dorian reveals a simple trick that will make your graphite drawings leap off the page:

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Gouache demo with Eyvind Earle—Background painter for animated films. Earle demonstrates the delicate, layered approach he took when using gouache to paint the intricate backgrounds for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959).

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Gouache tips with James Gurney—James Gurney has so many helpful videos about painting with gouache on his YouTube channel. Here’s one of them:

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Painting with three colors with James Gurney—Using just secondary colors (orange, green, and violet) James paints a portrait of a vacant house, has a surprise encounter with a former resident, and shares a beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson about returning to your childhood home.

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Gouache blending medium with Lena Rivo—The talented artist from Portugal explains how to use blending medium to make gouache dry more slowly:

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Metaphors and composition with Marshall Vandruff and Proko—On Draftsmen podcast, Marshall shares a brilliant nugget of wisdom—how to pair a subject and a visual metaphor to make more impactful compositions:

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Mid-century design with Mary Blair—Mary Blair was an inspiring color stylist and designer at the Walt Disney Company, and an illustrator of books and advertisements. Her art is known for its bold shapes, whimsical accents, and contrasting colors:

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Imitating ‘Alice’ with Mary Blair—Paint along with Erin Green (Children of the Craft on YouTube) as she replicates this pre-production piece by Mary Blair from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951):

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Ink drawing with Paul Heaston—Paul is one of my favorite sketch artists and an amazing pen and ink draftsman. Here he demonstrates his approach to different kinds of pen line work, hatching and other mark-making:

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Bonus: Music, Sounds, Images

• Animated film screen caps

• Live action film screen caps

• Free reference photos

• Wildlife photographic reference by Dustin Blaise

• Window Swap—live views from real windows

• Royalty-free music

• Royalty-free sound effects

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PLEASE NOTE: As an affiliate I may earn a small commission on links marked (*) at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support.