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The Essential Materials Every Illustrator Needs

podcast Dec 17, 2020
 

Here's a transcript from our podcast, in which we share with you the essential materials that every illustrator needs.

Let's Discuss Materials!

Helen:
So let's start by talking about why The Good Ship Illustration hate art materials so much! (We don't really hate art materials.) We just think that by concentrating too much on what specific materials you need, it can be a big distraction.

Katie:
Definitely. It's like getting the cart before the horse and we're big believers in starting where you are using what you have and not getting too caught up in finding the perfect art materials, because guess what? There aren't any!

Tania:
And also there's less pressure if you don't have lots of fancy stuff around you, because if you think you've spent a fortune in the art supplies shop, you want your money's worth out of them. And that already puts too much pressure on you to create something great with them. So why not start with something a little bit rubbishy? Then there's no pressure and you'll probably have a much better outcome.

Helen:
Sometimes a very nice relative or buy me a very expensive sketchbook with a leather bound cover or something for Christmas. And I can't, I can't work in them. I have to give them away because the pressure of using a leather bound sketchbook is just too much.

Tania:
Yeah. I always looked at those and thought the same, that the M word I couldn't, I couldn't draw in one of those. And eventually we figured out that using bits of old paper is actually - some of the best drawings happen on the backs of old bills and on the outside of sketchbooks. So we do have a fondness for getting a bulldog clip and a load of paper and working on those

Katie:
Yeah. Printer, paper's always a favorite cause it feels kind of throwaway. So there's no pressure. You can just get out and draw and you're not putting all this. 'It's got to be amazing because the paper cost five pounds a sheet'. And 'if I do it wrong, it's going to be terrible.' Yeah.

Helen:
When I used to go life drawing before life drawing, we used to nip into the little shop in the art school and equip ourselves with all the paper and materials we'd need. And I always just bought newsprint and took a bottle of ink or some charcoal because it meant I could do a hundred drawings. And if lots of them were rubbish, it didn't matter. Cause newsprint was like three pence each.

Tania:
I think newsprint is, is the God of great art materials because that's where, that's where all the process happens. Isn't it? And there's no pressure and some of the best work in old portfolios, you pull it out and it's on old newsprint. It's barely still living. You know, all wrinkled paper. It looks like it's about to fall apart. But that environment of no pressure does create the best work.

Helen:
The other thing is that if you have a huge bag full of all sorts of equipment if you're going to go out drawing, you can end up throwing everything at the picture and ruin it. But if you have one or two really lovely pieces of equipment, like a soft graphite stick and one tube of pen, you can do the most amazing drawing cause everything hangs together or knits together better than just throwing everything at the sketchbook.

Katie:
If you've done our free audio guide, The Sketchbooker's Friend you'll know that we say grab two materials and just use whatever you've got, like the back of an envelope or some old paper. And that's such a good way to just get started and get out of your own way.

Helen:
The other good thing is, even though you don't need really expensive equipment, it's handy to remember a few small things. Like, if you're going to go on a train journey and draw, then a tiny little notebook in your pocket is handy. It's really useful for that. And if you're going to go and draw out in the wilds in a field or something, or, you know, a harbour or whatever, then a massive sketchbook is lovely because you can lay it on the floor and kneel down beside it and spread your art materials out around. So you, you know, you can make the, make the equipment fit where you are, where are you going to draw?

Tania:
People will go out with a drawing board won't they? You know, maybe not A1 size, but we used to do that at college. And we would take drawing board, bulldog clip a pile of paper to it. And that would be a good way to work outside as well.

Helen:
Yeah. We used to do that at the zoo. Do you remember Tania, but Glasgow school of art that always be a few of us go into the zoo with a big board and a bag on our back. It was brilliant!

Tania:
I could really do with a bit of that, that art school environment. Again, it was so good just to go out with piles of equipment and say this whole day is based around drawing and you've got your best colors with you and your best brushes.

Katie:
Just draw, but not for a client or anything.

Tania:
Exactly. Drawing for your own fun. Every time I walk out the front door with the dog here I go past our amazing allotments and think, I wish we didn't have to get back in half an hour to start work. So I just want to sit at the top of the allotments and draw.

Do I need the best quality art materials to be a "proper" illustrator?

Katie: So short answer is no, don't let worried about the perfect material choice hold you back. But then also, Tania is heavily into her good pigments. So when we were talking about this, she was like, no, you can buy some nice things. So it's definitely worth

Tania:
Investing in some good colour. Not every colour. You don't have to have the full set, just a few things you really like because it goes back to limitations again, limit yourself to a few good colours, um, and buy a quality pigment. Because sometimes when you look at stuff that's been done in children's paint equipment or children's coloured pencils, there's no vibrancy to the colour at all. Um, and that just depresses you because you spend a lot of time with poor, poor quality colour and you don't get, you know, you don't get the inspiration out of it. You don't get the end results you need. So yeah, buy some good quality pigments for whatever medium you work in, whether it's watercolour, inks, acrylics, coloured pencils, or pastels.

Helen:
Yeah. I agree with that. When I, when I'm illustrating one of my picture books, I have a few paints that I really love. And so I buy the cheap versions of some pigments because they're the kind of the same right across the board. So it doesn't matter what quality they are, but there are a few colours. There's a really beautiful magenta that I love and I'll spend a lot of money on that particular colour because the pigment is so incredible. It's worth it. I'll use better quality paper if it's an illustration for a book, because I don't want the paper to wrinkle because then the print, the publisher can't scan it very easily. So I'll use good paper, some good pigment, some cheaper watercolour, but then I might use a stick to draw with, but that's a choice as well. I love a stick it's really valuable to me, but obviously it doesn't cost anything to buy it. So, you know, having the right equipment doesn't necessarily mean the most expensive equipment.

Katie:
Exactly. That's what I was going to say. Like there's no actual direct correlation between spending loads of money and having amazing materials, like fair enough. Some expensive materials are amazing, but the colours and pens that you get for children - those colours are really bright and intense. Helen bought those kids' paint sticks and they're amazing. You get such a beautiful texture, but they only cost like £3 a packet!

Helen:
Yeah. We got bingo dabbers art club, didn't we? I think it would have been so good. Yeah. The pigment in them is really lovely. So yeah, it's finding the right equipment. You might have something that's free. Like I like toilet roll. I really liked to dip toilet, roll in paint and squish it across the page, but I might use a really expensive pigment and put it on with the toilet roll.

Tania:
I think the other thing as well, if you're short on stuff and you haven't got the equipment, like at the beginning of COVID where people couldn't get paper or paints, and you ran out of what you had quite often being forced to make, do with a bit of old emultion paint and a charcoal stick or whatever, just two things can really bring out new things in your work. You know, you get really surprising results because you're out of your usual comfort zone and you move away from your own and you come up with something totally unexpected and inspiring through lack of equipment. It can really enhance your work.

 

Katie:
Definitely. I think there's something to be said for being able to use the cheap materials that you just have lying around and make them work. It means that when you do get your hands on something expensive and fancy, you're like, 'Oh my goodness, this is amazing'. Those pencils that I kept seeing everywhere, when I finally bought them, I was like, 'I can see why this pencil was so expensive because it's like the most glorious pencil' that's my guilty pleasure now to buy this specific brand of pencil. But when I was just using school pencils, HB, and 2B, it was good practice. And I wasn't worried about wasting the lead.

Tania:
Brushes as well; if you just have one or two good brushes and keep your burnt out old ones that are almost stumps, they make great marks in and of themselves. Just, you know, an old hog hairbrush, the school quality brush could make some really good marks and then keep a couple of good. Maybe not. I usually use a nylon one. I haven't bought the proper fine watercolor brushes, but I used to use a lot of Chinese brushes as well. And they're very cheap. You can get them in huge sizes and they're still very affordable. So you don't need the best stuff. Just being a bit resourceful.

Helen:
I also love a run-out felt tip pen. So I have a big bag full of felt pens, and some of them are professionals. Some of them are kid's felt pens. Some of them have got loads of paper, man, and work really well. Flood the paper. They're lovely. Another, another I've run out. Others have run out and they're great because you get a completely different texture and you might need that in the background of a picture. You might want something kind of textured and light. So a run out felt pen is brilliant.

Tania:
What about digital equipment? Because we all work differently. Don't we? I mean, it would probably be quite good to say, what our most essential bit of equipment is and how, how we use them. Helen's famous for having the oldest scanner amongst us all.

Helen:
I think I have the oldest scanner in the world. Definitely. I bought it 21 years ago and it's still going strong. So if I work completely by hand or multicolour paper, when I've finished the artwork for the book, I send it off to the publisher and they send it off to, I think, China to be scanned. I can't remember, but they sent it a long way away to be scanned professionally where if I work in part digitally. So some books that I work on I'll work by hand on a piece of paper and scan it in and build up layers on. I used to use Photoshop. I use Affinity now. Then I just use my 21 year old scanner and that artwork goes to the publisher and they print and that's fine. You definitely don't need state-of-the-art equipment.

Tania:
Some of the stuff that's been printed in books in your books, Helen has been scanned by your 21 year old scanner, is that right?

Helen:
It's only A4 and my books are obviously much bigger than A4, so I have to patch the scans together. It's just amazing.

Katie:
It must've been the most solidly built scanner of 21 years ago!

Helen:
I've dropped it about three times - massive clatter on the wooden floor, plug it back in. It's still goes!

Tania:
What about you, Katie? What's your digital setup or what do you use?

Katie:
I've just upgraded to a new iPad, but until literally weeks ago, I was using a second hand iPad pro from like 2016 and I loved it and I buy all my digital stuff second hand because I'm tight and because it's cheaper. I've found that it always works just as well. And you save - it's sometimes half the price. Adopt don't shop is my advice. I work directly into my iPad. If I'm live illustrating, I'll be watching the webinar or the whatever and drawing straight away. And then as soon as the webinar's finished, I'll save the image and then airdrop it to myself and then I can send the image file and I'll airdrop the video and then compress it and send it to the client. And that is one thing, like having everything on Apple or like just choosing one system, it really saves so much time because being able to airdrop stuff to myself, saves actual hours. Before everything was Apple, I would like save it into an email and an email it to myself and then bla bla bla. So it's like putting a value on saving loads of time and making it really easy for yourself.

Tania:
Your description of your old self is my present self.

Katie:
No stop emailing yourself! Clogs up your emails as well. It makes the email box sad. .

Tania:
I've I've now used airdrop more frequently. So yeah, I've got with the program.

Helen:
Tell us about your process. Tania. Do you use a scanner or do you photograph your sketches? How do you work?

Tania:
I used to scan my sketches in, but then it got so complicated. So now I just take a shot of them on my phone, airdrop them to myself because I can do that much quicker and then put them composite, lots of sketches together on one sheet. I then import them into Photoshop and I draw above them sort of effectively trace above them with, usually illustrator pen tools or Photoshop pen tools and then draw with digital brushes on top of that.

Katie:
It must be a lot quicker doing photos! Just snap a quick picture and then put it in.

Tania:
It does, it's so much quicker, than scans. If you're doing that with lots of images scanning, each time just takes so long. And then you start trying to refine the pencil drawing because it looks too grayed out or too shadowy. So yeah, the phone is much better and sped up my process so much more.

Katie:
All hail technology!

Tania:
Of course there's a Wacom in there as well. A very ancient old Wacom tablet and Wacom pen - the nib is almost blunt on it.

Katie:
Is the paddle like scratched up from when you've been drawing on it for years as well?

Tania:
Exactly. If you run your finger over, it feels like some vinyl with a bit of a scratch on it, but yeah, that's what I, that's, what I couldn't do without is the Wacom pen I've used that for probably the past 20 years. That would be my number one, Photoshop and Wacom.

Helen:
So it's interesting, isn't it? Like, we all have a mixture of stuff that works for us. And I think Tania, you were saying earlier that we've all cobbled together these ways of working that work for us. And we have no idea what anybody else is doing in their house when they're at work, but we all just find what works for us. And sometimes it's a brand new iPad and then an ancient 21 year old scanner. Until about a month ago I had a mouse with a cable that attached to the computer. And I'd had that as long as the scanner.

Tania:
Didn't you say that you drew with your mouse?

Helen:
No, I never actually drew with it. I would use it for building up layers on Photoshop and ultra in layers and stuff, but I actually never ever draw onto a screen because I really love a dip pen or a stick and I just, there's nothing to beat it.

Tania:
Yeah, absolutely. I think the other thing as well, that we were saying Katie is, I don't know whether that is fair to say that, but Katie seems the most techie amongst us, but it was really interesting when we all got together and talked about our process because it's sometimes a bit embarrassing when you think, I don't really know how people do this professionally, but this method seems to work. It's a bit like the way I used to do long division. It wasn't like it wasn't anything like the way the math teacher told us, but I could usually get the right answer. And I think it's the same with tech. And when I found out how that we all worked in quite a similar way, or we had a similar rationale to getting to our end product, it was such a relief to be able to talk about process. I would have been too embarrassed to talk about it a few years ago, thinking I'm sure I've got all this wrong, but it does. Yeah. It, it, it gets your workout at the end of your own kind of personal roundabout process.

Katie:
Yeah. It took me ages to figure out like file types and stuff. Like we got taught at uni, like how to save the right file type and compression that should be in blah, blah, blah. And for years after uni, I would save stuff and it'd be pixelated and I'd be like, I have no idea why that's happened. I don't really know what I'm doing. And it's still not a hundred percent sure all the time. But like, I think now there's so many more YouTube tutorials where you can be like, what are the settings that I need before I start this piece of work? But yeah, it's always like feeling too embarrassed to ask. Is it like, 'I should know this!'

Tania:
Yeah. The world of YouTube and video tutorials is such a blessing. They used to be quite thin on the ground. And then you'd always have to go into the Adobe page as well, which would just be like trawling through a huge library. Interesting. Just show me on the screen, how to do it.

Helen:
It's thanks to all those brilliant YouTube tutorials that I decided to quit Photoshop and move over to Affinity because I was so fed up of being tied to Photoshop with monthly fees and Affinity is so much cheaper. This sounds like an advert for Affinity. It's not because I loved Photoshop and used it for years and years and years. But, um, yeah, I switched over to affinity and just learned it really quickly because of all the brilliant YouTube tutorials. Brilliant - I love Affinity.

Katie:
I'm inspired. You've made me want to jump off the Adobe wagon onto the Affinity one.

Tania:
Yeah, it was inspiring too, because you, you know, you use tech a lot in your work, but the fact that you mostly, you drew and then, and didn't want to do too much digital stuff to interfere with the quality of the image. And then you jumped into Affinity that quickly and we're working away on an entire book. And I was like, wow, it must be doable along with some, some of the other softwares you use.

Helen:
I actually just use Affinity for the new picture book I'm working on. So I do all the work by hand on pieces of paper and scan it in and layer it up on Affinity. It's really intuitive. It's just so similar to Photoshop. If I've just learned it on the job, it's very easy.

 

 


Listen/read the next episode:
What's Stopping You Doing the Work to Find Your Creative Voice?

 

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Finding Your Creative Voice with The Good Ship Illustration

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related CONTENT

Finding Your Creative Voice with The Good Ship Illustration

Creative Inspiration and Where to Find It

The Essential Materials Every Illustrator Needs

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