Your Expert Guide to Art Supplies in the UK
Somewhere between the CAD file and the finished set of drawings, there’s still a moment where a human hand has to pick up a pen. Maybe it’s a quick section sketch pinned to the studio wall, a hand-annotated site survey, or a student portfolio that needs to look like it was made by a person … Read more
There’s a particular kind of heartbreak reserved for the moment your carefully inked sketch meets a watercolour wash and the lines start to bleed into a grey smudge. If you’ve been there, you already know why waterproof fineliner pens matter more than almost any other tool in a mixed media kit. So, what is a … Read more
Somewhere between a biro that skips and a fountain pen that leaks onto your cuff sits the humble fineliner — quietly the most underrated tool in any stationery drawer. If you’ve ever hunted for the best fineliner pens and drowned in a sea of near-identical black tubes with baffling numbers on the side (0.03? 0.5? … Read more
Stand in front of the pencil aisle at any UK stationer and you’ll see the same puzzle: a tin of twelve for a few pounds sitting next to a wooden box that costs more than a week’s shopping. So what’s actually going on between cheap vs expensive coloured pencils, and is the pricier tin genuinely … Read more
Somewhere between “I fancy trying colouring” and “I own £200 of pencils I’ve used twice” lies a very sensible middle ground: cheap coloured pencils. Not the pound-shop ones that snap the second you look at them funny, but genuinely decent sets that happen to cost less than a round of coffees for four. Cheap coloured … Read more
Stand in front of the pencil aisle in any UK art shop and you’ll understand the problem instantly: forty different tins, all promising to unlock your inner artist, none of them explaining what actually separates a lovely set from a waste of a tenner. A coloured pencil set for beginners is, in the simplest possible … Read more
Stand in front of an art shop wall of coloured pencils for long enough and you’ll start to feel a bit like you’re choosing a wand at Ollivander’s. Every tin promises “buttery,” “vibrant,” “professional grade” — and somewhere on the box, in small print, sits the detail that actually matters: whether that pencil is wax … Read more
Pick up a lump of graphite and you can shade. Pick up an oil based coloured pencil and you can build light out of nothing — layer by stubborn, waxy-smooth layer, until a bowl of clementines looks wet enough to lick. That’s the appeal, and also the trap: walk into the pencil aisle (or, more … Read more
Stand in front of an art shop shelf for more than thirty seconds and you’ll feel it: the quiet tug-of-war between the tidy tin of pencils and the little metal box of pans. Watercolour pencils vs watercolour paints isn’t just a shopping question, it’s a question about how you actually want to spend your Sunday … Read more
Somewhere between a sketchbook and a paint box sits one of the most underrated tools in the art world, and if you’ve typed “best watercolour pencils” into a search bar tonight, you’re about to discover why so many artists quietly swear by them. A watercolour pencil is exactly what it sounds like: a coloured pencil … Read more