Which Items Do You Need For Drawing Landscapes?..
Where do I start? What am I going to need to get started? A lot of this really is down to personal choice and how much you actually want to spend. I absolutely stress that your basic needs do not need to be expensive. Therefore I am only writing this as a general guide to help you.
Usually it is fairly important where you choose to paint in the first place. It really helps if you place yourself somewhere where, in fact, the light is good. It helps if you have space around you too for your tools. Natural daylight is good, if not, you need fairly good lighting. Then you need something that can be used as a palette. Old china serves well.
Strangely enough, I keep my shoe boxes to keep my paints in as these are quite roomy. As I have progressed I have noticed that this is quite common amongst painters. The essentials then that you need are a selection of brushes, naturally colours, medium, and a support of some type or canvas.
You can use a shelf, cupboard, desk or table to prop your canvas up on. Now to your actual drawing materials! Pencils, obviously these are pretty important for your creation. You can have a selection of pencils ranging from HB through to 6B.
I like to obtain pale grey and yet also dark black tones, so for this you need a soft pencil. A Venus 6B is ideal, so I tend to use this, but it needs sharpening a few times! From here you will also need to be able to sharpen your pencils. Men often use a razor blade or penknife. Personally I make sure that I have a strong sharpener.
As for choice of drawing pads it is much easier to buy one with a hard back. Sometimes things go wrong and you do not want to use a rubber. Just take a fresh sheet and begin anew.
We often like to sketch on the spot. This being so, it is so easy to carry the smaller versions of sketch pads. Not only do they come with smooth perforated paper and a hard back but they are ready to tear out.
Pens - this is very personal to the artist him or herself. Ballpoint pens are never too successful as they do not give you light and shade or a definite thin or thick line for your drawing.
You may find an ordinary fountain pen works pretty well. However you can obtain pens with nibs that you can use with inks, other pens too, including ones with felt tip.
As landscapes are often drawn in the open air you need to wrap up well. Dig out some thick socks, boots probably, your old comfy clothes, as you not only need to be warm, but comfortable also. A flask of coffee might help.
A stool that you might buy in a surplus store or camping shop is easy to carry and needed to sit on. Unless you sit on walls and get a cold bottom! Useful I find too, is to cut a square out of the centre of a piece of cardboard to frame your work as you draw.
