I'm sort of an artist on a tight budget, can anyone suggest a way to create or buy good art materials?

Question

For starters, I'm really a novice trying to learn. I work mostly in pencil or marker mediums. The problem being, I need some art pens, pencils, erasers, sharpeners, etc, for a program I am going to try.

The only problem being: I have an extremely low budget. I need to buy or make good art materials without spending a lot of money. Can anyone help me out?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Believe it or not I have found tons of old canvases at garage sales with incredible frames and I just paint over the paintings.

For pens, pencils, etc.  Just go to your nearest dollar store and you can get tons of materials for under $10.

Answer 2

Most of the stuff you listed is cheap. You should need about a buck for a good eraser and sharpener...a good pencil set is about $10, but to start out you could skip a hardness level (ie 2b, 4b, 6b) instead of getting every pencil to start out with. The key is to not overbuy. Only buy the stuff you will need to most first, and then when you run out or use it up, then go back and get more. Because a lot of times you end up not using a lot of the supplies you buy.

Anyway, to get all of your supplies you listed, thats only about $20.

Answer 3

Pencils range from very expensive to fairly inexpensive.  It might be worth it to find out which ones you'll actually need- often beginning drawing classes only use the B pencils, and maybe a 2H, because H pencils are generally more difficult to use.  If this is the case, you only need to buy 4-5 pencils.  Erasers and sharpeners are very inexpensive, as already mentioned- the little metal sharpeners (without a receptacle)  are the best functionality-wise and are under a dollar.  Pens, for pen work, don't have to be fancy either.  Many people swear by Micron pens, but oftentimes just a gel-ink pen that you have lying around in your house will work fine, as long as it doesn't require too much pressure or put out too much ink.  Experiment with different pens, you probably don't even need to buy one.

Answer 4

If you had said clay, I would have suggested that you can just dig some out of the ground. Sharpeners, I suppose a non-serrated knife would do. But making pens, pencils, and erasers? And paper goes along with that, right? Well, there is papermaking info on the web, so you might be able to recycle old paper, but by the time you bought the supplies to do it, you could have spent the money on the paper.

Unless you're doing calligraphy, wouldn't a regular fine point ballpoint pen do? I personally think Pilot pens have the nicest line, and they can be bought at Wal-mart, etc.

So maybe your best bet is to scrounge for supplies.

a. Look at craft stores such as A.C. Moore and Michael's for supplies. They may not be the finest on the market, but likely they'll cost a lot less. They do carry art pencils, pens, etc.

b. You could ask the art supply store if they have any seconds or discards you can have or buy at low cost.

c. You can check your local craigslist or post a request for unloved art supplies on it, or offer to buy them. There is a "freecycle" section where people recycle their unwanted things by just giving them away. If you post, someone is bound to have bought supplies and not used them. Find your local site here: http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites.ht...

d. You can search online for wholesale art supplies or discount art supplies. You could even start a business getting them wholesale and selling for a good price to your fellow art students. With no store overhead, you could make some extra money for yourself, or at least defray the cost of your own supplies. (Of course, if you make enough money at it, you'd have to pay taxes, but only on profits, which count only after expenses.)