Like me, you may be one of those people who’ve always thought that you’ll buy higher quality (& price) art supplies when you’re good enough.

I’m that way with writing supplies, too–I’ve self-published three books on Amazon, but have stacks of empty writing journals that I don’t want to mess up with what might be inferior writing. I prefer spiral notebooks from Walmart.

Back to the art side of things–what is good enough? How will we know when we’re worthy of the nice stuff–the professional grade paints & brushes, paper & canvases, etc? I always figured that I’d somehow know when the time came, but I’ve been trying my hand at art off and on for years and feel that I’m still a long way from being good enough to spend lots of money on fancy art supplies.

My husband and I have a booth at a local antique mall and one of our favorite activities is to go picking. Yesterday we went to a thrift store where we found a never-used 126-piece Artist’s Loft Drawing Art set for $20. We have a birthday coming up in the family, and although we don’t usually buy gifts at thrift stores, this art set seemed perfect.

When we got it home, I looked it up online and found it on Walmart’s website:

Wow, we saved nearly $40! Although we were happy about the savings, we soon realized that this set wasn’t really age-appropriate for who we’d bought it for. So I decided to add it to my ragtag collection of art supplies.

After opening the set I decided to give the colored pencils a try, although I’ve used them in the past and been frustrated with the results. However, I’d recently watched a couple of YouTube videos about colored pencils and hoped that I might be able to do better. Apparently, the best way to use them is with a light hand and creating several layers of color. That’s definitely not the way I’d used them before–I was used to painting with acrylic paints, and I’d pressed hard with the pencils to try to achieve vibrant color. What I’d actually done was flatten and fill up the tooth of the paper, which prevents the application of more layers.

To try my new pencils out, I decided to keep it simple and draw an apple. I didn’t use a reference picture and I only used the colors in the set. Below is the result:

Honestly, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I wondered about the quality of the pencils–they seemed pretty good to me. They’re labeled “Artist’s Loft, ” and when I looked it up, saw that it’s a brand carried by Michael’s Stores. 

But how good are they? On the Michael’s website, they’re described as “Academic Level 1” colored pencils. As I understand it, there are two general categories of art supplies–student grade and professional grade. Academic, I’m pretty sure, means student grade.

But I didn’t mind. I thought my apple came out pretty good. Why spend lots of money on the fancy stuff?

After I finished the apple, I decided that I wanted to write a blog about how student grade supplies can be good enough. At least for someone like me, who isn’t a real artist and isn’t trying to sell my work.

Then I remembered my professional grade Prismacolor colored pencils, carefully tucked away in a drawer waiting for me to get to the good-enough stage. I’ve had them for years and can’t remember if I bought them in a moment of bravado or if they were a gift. They’ve only been used a couple of times–they’re waiting for the “good enough” moment to happen.

I realized that if I want to prove that student grade is good enough, I should do a side-by-side comparison. So I pulled out the Prismacolor pencils and drew another apple just now. I tried to be consistent with how many colors, how many layers, and how hard I pressed down into the paper.

Below on the left is the Artist’s Loft version, and on the right is Prismacolor:

Hmm….suddenly my Artist’s Loft apple doesn’t look so good.

I have two take-aways from my experiment:

1. Higher quality art supplies are worth it

and

2. For those of us who keep waiting to be good enough for the good stuff, you know what? We already are.

I still like the Artist’s Loft pencils, and will use them when I’m doing quick sketches and practicing & experimenting in my sketchbook.

But I’ve finally come to accept what I’ve heard again and again–better supplies will help us to create better art.