Tools of the Trade

Hello August!
2025

   How's everyone doing? We hanging in there? Yes? Good. Have a nice cold glass of water and take a breath. Better? Wonderful.
   After camping for 5 days with no signal in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I came home nervous I had moldy clothes and trench foot (I had neither) but also with a STRONG desire to delete instagram from my phone. I've already done this with facebook, though I haven't deleted the profile I never check it anymore. As a business owner I tell myself I "need" to have a social media presence. But do I? I have never been any good at getting online shop sales, my audience always seems to be small. At the end of the day what am I doing on there other than prostrating myself begging for attention and seeing things that make me jealous/stressed/insecure/upset? (And, yes, the occasional really funny video of someone making a ditty to the chime of their washer and dryer.)
   For now instead of deleting I've gone with just having self control, and I'm pleased to report I've barely spent more than ten minutes on social media a day since returning from the mountains. It was unsettling how SCARED I was that I would MISS THINGS. I can't check up on my THINGS!!! Who will validate me for the giant bowl of basil I harvested? NOBODY??? But once forced to let this go? Wow. Relief.
   I've still been foggy and frantic, don't get me wrong. It's still 95F every day, 90% humidity, there are still plenty of worries floating in my head. And I've been incredibly unproductive as an artist--no writing, no editing, no progress on book goals, barely painting. Most of what I've managed is some little sketchbook doodles. Slowly, slowly, I'm coaxing myself into starting a new children's book. I'm making the sketches. I'm a snail in molasses.
   Deep breath. More water. It's okay.
   I did very much enjoy listening to the very start of the D&D podcast Dimension 20 Fantasy High while I played around with this painting. I don't practice backgrounds as much as figures, and with no clear reference photo I struggled! But the goblin is so cute.

 Last month I walked you through the steps I take to create a painting. This month I'm going to go into detail about what brands and materials I'm using! This is in part to celebrate finally finding a brand of paper I REALLY like! But also I know sometimes if you're eager to make art, knowing what materials you need can be a daunting hurdle. What other artists do can seem like magic, and I want to offer some clarity. When I started out in 2007, there weren't as many online resources as their are now, so it felt like everything was this big secret. I'm so grateful to all the artists who so generously shared their "secrets" so I could learn, and it is my pleasure to offer the same to any artists following me.
   (*Please note, I'm by no means saying I've found the best ways and tools, this is just how I do it for now.)
   So without further ado, here's everything you need to know about what I'm using to make my art.

   Paper:

-For sketching: Strathmore brand sketchpads. I keep a small 5.5x8.5, a mid size 9x12, and a big 18x24 inch on hand. I sketch sloppy, I erase a TON, so I never draw right on the watercolor paper. I'll transfer a sketch from sketchpad to watercolor with a light pad.

-For painting: Fluid 100, cold press watercolor pad, 140lb or 300lb (refers to how thick the paper is). I really like a toothy (rough, like sandpaper) paper without too much texture (like little waves on water, I like little to no waves) so that I can do lots of detail without it being lost in the texture, but it's still absorbent. This paper is the best I've found lately. I keep a 12x12 and an 18x24 inch pad.

   Drawing:

-Mechanical pencil, 0.5mm F graphite and a 1.1mm with softer graphite. (I use the 0.5 size mostly because I found that adorable cat pencil and it only came in 0.5mm.)

-Staedtler permanent felt tip is the marker I'll use to trace a sketch before transferring from sketchbook to watercolor paper, to make it more visible and refine shapes

-Micron 01 archival ink felt tip for occasional details

   Painting:

-Winsor & Newton Designer Gouache. I've tried other brands and dislike all of them very much. W&N seems to have good pigment, great texture, and the designer gouache can be reused like watercolors once dried. You can get acrylic gouache or a jelly gouache, but I personally much prefer the designer kind.

-Brushes: I got THIS set because I wanted a fatter handle to reduce hand strain. Turned out not quite what I'd hoped for exactly, but in terms of range of sizes and brush quality they are just fine! I usually browse a craft store and select brushes based on good handle color and fun shape. Mostly I use round brushes, but I highly recommend some flat and funky ones!

   I use Procreate, either to edit a finished gouache painting (adding watermark, adjusting the scan hue/saturation to match the real thing, editing out cat hairs, cropping for print sizes) or for creating a full piece. I'm weirdly purist and either use just Procreate for a painting or just gouache.
   My iPad is the iPad Pro, 12.9 inch 2nd gen. I've been extremely happy with it! I never used Photoshop or any other digital art program, and Procreate was so friendly and accessible for a self taught digital artist. An incredibly useful tool for expanding my comfort zone. I like to use it for making color tests for gouache paintings and trying things that scare me, drawings I know I'll have to do badly for a bit so I don't waste expensive watercolor paper and paint.

   Brushes used:
Stucco
Oberon
Water Brush
6B Pencil
Narinder Pencil
Oriental Brush
Charcoal Block
Dry Ink
Hard Blend

   I also bought 2 brush packs to supplement the ones that come with Procreate which I really like:

-Watercolor Maxpack
Max U Waxy Pencil

-Schrill Art Big Stew
Waxy Texture Pencil
Coarse Texture Pencil
Ginger Skin
Waxy Dense Pencil

   Both come with near a hundred brushes, of which I use... only the brushes listed (yes, I don't even use the watercolor brushes from the watercolor pack shhhhhh it's fineeeeeee). I prefer a limited number of brushes that are as close to natural looking tools as possible. I want TEXTURE. My favorite thing is when people are looking at all my prints at a show and can't pick out which is digital and which is gouache.
   I like to sketch in either the 6B Pencil or the Waxy Dense Pencil. I block in backgrounds with Stucco, add far away details with the Waxy Texture Pencil and MaxU Colored Pencil Waxy, then I add closer details with Oberon. (On several of these I edited the brush to allow them to go bigger.)

   Here's where I work!
   I am not a minimalist. You can see here that I've got a basic desk, a couple of easels (one from Michaels and one larger I inherited from my architect parents), a light I commandeered during my manufacturing job days, my scanner, and tons of notes to myself and art that I love.

Other tools:

-Light Pad/Table: A most handy dandy gadget. A daytime window does the trick in a pinch, or any clear surface with a light behind it (glass table, piece of plexiglass and a lamp, etc). I am spoiled with my Art O Graph light pad, and grateful to be so.

-Scanner: PlusTek brand. It’s an older model, I’ve had it for maybe 10 years now. They are expensive, especially for one that size, but a must for getting good reproductions of my art. I still have to do some fiddling to get the scan to match the original. There's probably a trick to it that I don't know.

-Printer: I have a very cheap HP printer for printing random documents and sometimes sketches I've done in procreate I want to paint in gouache. For all my art prints, I use IPRINTFROMHOME. They offer a paper sample pack of all their print surfaces, tons of sizes, and I don’t have to lose sleep, hair, and time over messing with the infinitely infuriating process that I hear is printing. Win win. If you want to start using them, please use the link above and MENTION MY NAME and YOU get a discount!!! I even use them for ordering photos for my photo album.

Useful Programs:

-Affinity Publisher: For building and editing PDFs, one time purchase not a subscription. I believe it was about $60. I don’t use anything Adobe. Who can afford that? I've probably only tapped into about 5% of what this program can do.

-Paint: I sometimes use this to resize scans and to add a watermark before posting them online. Very oldschool of me, I know.

-Libre Office: FREE alternative to Microsoft Suite. Highly recommend.

-pCloud: Not free alternative to Google Drive, offers a one time purchase package instead of a monthly fee. It backs up all my files and auto syncs folders on my computer to the cloud. If you can afford it, a great tool for your peace of mind. And they seem to be morally sound and not implementing any shady things, like giving themselves permission to access anything you have saved there and feeding it to AI like Google Drive does now.

 Other thingsss:
Ruler (metal with cork back), Exacto (for putting a little fear in you), studio cat (for distractions and adding cat hair in paint for seasoning), snail paintbrush holder (for pure joy), circle template (so you don’t have to find the exact right sized cup or bowl every time you don't want to paint a background and just want a circle), Prismacolor colored pencils (I don’t use them much anymore but they’re the best colored pencils I’ve ever used), so many notebooks and pens for journaling and scribbling ideas, masking fluid (this is a tricky little substance I frequently forget to use, but can be handy for blocking off areas when painting-- just don't leave it on the paper more than a day or two or you will rip the paper when taking it off!) a doorway pull up bar (for frequent breaks to dangle for 30 seconds and decompress your spine)

   See? No magic anywhere! Just time and patience and some fun tools.
   Are you feeling inspired? Do you have grabby hands and just really want to get some fun toys to play with? Well good! Drink some more water, grab some paper, and have fun. Play around and find what works for you. At the end of the day you can use whatever tools feel good to you, even if it's a ballpoint pen and a piece of lined paper or the back of a receipt. We all start somewhere. The key is to start.
   Have any questions? Feel free to email me or send me an instagram message.
   Wishing  you a little creative joy,
Lara Jean