Parents often ask me what materials do I reccomend to buy. First of all, you will almost always get a better final effect and have richer color choices with better materials. I try to provide top notch materials for our students on a tight budget, so they are learning to work with industry/professional standard for art and design. However, that is now hard to do because the WCSD shut down our Teacher Warehouse. It was a tragic loss and they did so without talking to teachers first. The Teacher Warehouse saved my classroom hundreds of dollars a year in good materials. Please know that we welcome all donations to our classroom! Below is a list of what I find to be the most useful materials to use. I will try and provide links to where I find the best prices, but these sites might change and I might not be able to keep up with the changes to outside sites. BLICK will give you a student discount if you show them your student ID, especially at the start of the semesters.
Kids love to use acrylic markers. They are fine for some projects, but not for large areas. I only use the acrylic markers for signage, and tiny fine details.
Limitations: they have a limited color pallet, tend to create a very flat look, they dry up/run out of paint quickly and look terrible on large areas. My head blows off if I see a student trying to use them on an large area of the canvas or paper because it is incredibly wasteful, expensive, and woefully inefficient. You should always use paint and a brush for areas larger than a 1/2 inch.
I like the large set of 48 colors better than the Posca markers, as the Posca's have a limited color pallet but they do come in a variety of tip sizes. Kids love the Posca's but I do not think POSCA's are worth the money.
It is always better and less expensive to mix your own colors. You will get more vibrancy and depth in your paintings by mixing colors yourself. To mix your own fine point colors I use art syringes which are inexpensive and I can make any color that I want combining acrylic paint and adding a little water so the paint flows through the syringe. They especially nice for dotting. I will recommend Acrylic paint types below.
One can get away with using student grade Acrylic paint and no-one will be the wiser. We use BLICK brand student grade acrylic paint. I go to a better grade of paint when I need specific colors that are not offered in the BLICK student grade acrylics. Stay away from buying paint sets! The sets frequently not give you the correct primary colors for mixing colors and your colors will wind up looking muddy. Paint is much like ink colors for your printer; you need Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, and with those colors you can mostly mix all the other colors. These are the main Acrylic Paint colors that you should buy; there are some additional colors that will give you more sophisticated color mixing options and are what professionals use:
CYAN, (PRIMARY BLUE)
Primary Magenta (or Primary RED) Be careful here, because RED is not a primary color; it has to be labeled PRIMARY RED which is actually magenta, which is very confusing to most people, especially adults who were taught lies about color. (Please go to my Color page if you want to understand more.)
Primary Yellow
Ultramarine Blue Blue
Paynes Grey
Titanium White
Unbleached Titanium - this is a buff color that has some transparency and is extremely useful
Cadmium Red Deep
Phthalo Blue or Prussian Blue Hue
Cadmium Yellow Deep
Burnt Umber
I also like to have a Yellow Oxide also called Yellow Ochre, a Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Quinacridone Magenta, Prussian Blue Hue, Coibalt Blue, Mars Black. I encourage students to mix thier own black because it will have more depth than one out of the tube. In fact, I do not even put a black out for them to use. I also like to mix color using some of the new fluorescent colors, but be aware that they fade if exposed to light and they are very transparent. I love to use Fluorescent Purple and Fluorescent Pink to mix with other colors to create more vivid colors.
I recommend PRISMACOLOR colored pencils, if you can afford them. They are the industry standard in art and design. They are much more expensive than others, but they blend well, and you will get a much nicer final effect using them. The portrait colors set is what we use in class. The company just came out with a huge set that is fun to use; but one can get by on a much smaller set or supplementing a smaller set with individual colors that you can get online at BLICK.
I also recommend looking at BLICK's own line of colored pencils. They are almost as good as Prismacolors and are a much more affordable. The Blick Essentials are for classrooms and the link below it, is a bigger line of Blick's brand with more variety and choices.
There are two types of watercolors that I love.
The MEI LIANG line is wonderful! Colors will be more vibrant and thus you will potentially use less because of the high pigmentation. I love the high pigmentation of these paints because watercolor fades after it dries, but these seem to stay bright. They are also good for painting while traveling.
The other line of watercolors that I adore are the Kuretake GANSAI TAMBI Watercolor paint. The paint pots are much much larger than other pan watercolors and well worth the price. The box they come in is large and might not be as good for travel paints.