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Eldest daughter is seven shortly. She adores drawing with pencils/felt/markers. These are always destroyed by her younger sister.
The other half and I want to encourage this as much as possible by getting her something she can use herself quality pens, pencils, paper.
Any suggestions from the arty STW massive? There is enough talent in these parts surely - I have seen some amazing work over the years.
Any particular specialist supplier?
Cheers in advance 👌
The Range have a good art section, as do Hobby Craft. My daughter is an A level Art student and gets me to spend millions on her stuff in The Range. Some good sets.
Acrylic paints
Watercolour powder (but it is very spendy)
A good set of graphite pencils
Pre-stretched canvasses
We use Hobbycraft lots (our daughter was a similar age when she started to take an interest).
If she doesn’t do it already, also look for an after school art club so she can learn techniques, understand art styles etc.
The Range it there is one near you. They do the same stuff as Hobby Craft but cheaper. Buying more expensive stuff won't stop her younger sister destroying it. Perhaps buy the younger sister some age appropriate thicker pens to use while getting the older sister the better stuff and trying to get them to both paint without fighting over the pens?
I like Cass art. Sketchbooks are good as you get to keep all the pics together! The simple A5/A4 eco range is good imo
Felt tips, coloured pencils, normal pencils, paints, anything is good!
Edit: I have 2 kids 7 & 9 who like drawing aswell.
Cult Pens is good site. We got our 8yr old the same pens Rob Biddulph uses for his draw with Rob series. He loved them.
Yes I've used Cult Pens aswell, they gave me something free!
Paint: Jackson Art supplies or Cass Art, they both have discounts on various sets
Some nice watercolours (begin with student grade) is always good. A set of Cotman Watercolours?
This field box is half price and is also nice treasure-like thing to own and be proud of? The included brush is only good for fine details though so a decent and much larger (still budget) brush would be better (ie No 8 and/or No 14 ESCODA : VERSATIL SYNTHETIC KOLINSKY
And a budget 300gsm watercolour pad something like this
If you want to get some nice bright acrylic paints I can recommend Daler-Rowney System 3 student grade (which I still use when need to cover a lot of canvas). Good for painting with small or large brushes, fingers, palette knives (plastic ones available)
She could make a stay-wet-palette for acrylics from a simple foil turkey tray (or large tupperware even better, some watercolour paper and some baking/parchment paper.
Modelling dough/clay?
In fact you can get cheap canvas and canvas board from The Works.
Probably an easel too. Here’s a table easel
I wouldn't bother with canvases for someone of that age but get sketchbook paper in bulk and eke it out. Cheap acrylics are fine (get big tubes of the main colours) but get a range of acrylic paintbrushes and some soft pencils and erasers. Tape the paper down when painting. Wilkos do some nice cheap art stuff for kids (metallic paints etc). Art materials are a very good investment.
Not what you want but: Sharpies in as many colours as you can. We have two boys and yes sharpies are permanent markers but we have never had any mishaps! They love them, the original pack of pens we got about 3 years ago when they were 7 and 5yrs old and they are still going strong and don't need sharpening every 5 minutes because the lead is broken in the pencils due to been dropped 1000 times... Also got the adult colouring books.
We are now "investing" in POSCA paint pens this christmas.
For crying out loud go to your local proper art shop and ask their advice and buy from them. Local shops are suffering really badly especially art ones as students aren’t buying as much this year. My wife is an illustrator for 20 years and still asks for advice from our local shop when she wants to try something new as they sell loads of stuff to a variety of people and know what gets good repeat sales and most who work there will be artists themselves.
My local shop is often cheaper than the internet or at least the same price.
What would be really nice would be to take the kid to the shop and buy with them, start a discussion with the people working there about what she likes to do. Maybe get a nice toolbox to store them in away from prying eyes.
Then buy her everything she wants, anything to encourage physical art work rather than the endless computer based stuff you see now.
For a 7 yo The Works do some excellent art sets that are just fine for that age. Well priced and good enough quality.
Thanks All. Really appreciate those responses 👍 That gives me plenty to go at. Some great suggestions. Going to pop into the local(ish) art shop later. Looks a real emporium. But ‘closing down with a heavy heart’ in the new year. Hopefully get some bits and top up with slightly cheaper, bulk supplies, including some for her wee sis.
If she loves drawing then watercolor pencils are fantastic.
They're great because you can draw with them but dip them in water and you can get a bit painterly with them. Or get a brush out after you've put the pencil down and work on them ike that. Get a few bigger sketchbooks with some heavier weight watercolour paper and you're away.
Sorry to hear your local art supplier is closing. I'd absolutely echo what @b230ftw has said. Ours (Clarkcraft) is bloody brilliant.
I was down there the day they reopened last week. I can get everything I need cheaper online, but it's a great resource to have and I'd miss it if it were gone. Me, Mrs Binners (also an illustrator) and the kids get so much stuff off them that they discount everything for us anyway. Get to know them. They're a font of knowledge which Amazon isn't.
As Binners said Watercolour pencils. Also chalks. Mediums that can manipulated once on a page. Decent heavy’ish paper. No need to go overboard. Wait with acrylics and even watercolour paints. Wax crayons are great too.
Now I am sat at my computer I thought I would share these – this is some of the art my two girls have created at their after school art club and if the OPs daughter is as enthusiastic as she sounds, she would really enjoy it. As you can see, they have learned about techniques, colours, styles, lighting, perspective etc. They were doing this stuff from about age 8 onwards so similar ages to the OPs daughter.
We also have many art books (both my wife and myself were art students) and we sometimes sit down and discuss the art, colours used etc and get them to try to work in similar ways (pointillism, large scale such as Monet etc) although I accept the OP may not have those skills (but perhaps you could still get an art book for her)?
One of our daughters still does absolutely loads of art but is now moving on to photography so it's suddenly going to get a whole load more expensive.
Well. That was an education. Popped into;
https://www.turnersartshop.co.uk/about-us-14-w.asp
Which is the local(ish) shop for us. Founded in 1895 as a chemists who fixed fountain pens on the side. A real shame it’s closing.
She’ll be a lucky girl as they had 50% off, so I got plenty of quality stuff and an absolute bucket load of friendly helpful advice. I’ll be following up on the classes and book recommendations. We have an award winning Indy bookshop in our local village so I’ll be in there at the weekend to see what they may have.
Again, cheers for all the suggestions - I’ll no doubt be dipping back into this thread and the suggestions made in future. I also think I’ll give things a bash and have a go at drawing myself. Maybe something we can do together 👌
EDIT - top stuff Johndoh!
Thank you (from my daughters) 🙂
Sounds like a top result even if for a sad reason (shop closing) 👍🏼 I have a discount/loyalty card with local art materials shop and always check there first.
Good on b230ftw and binners for mentioning those options
Late to the thread as you've bought the stuff already, but echoing what binners said: watercolour pencils, some watercolour paper, a jam jar of water and a brush is loads of fun, even for a complete amateur like me.
Cheers Mogrim. Watercolour pencils were at the top of my list. Nice set of 30 SwissColour ones 👍
Great stuff Beagle. Glad you got sorted. Will you keep us posted on how she gets on? We'd love to see what she creates.
Loving your girl's work there johndoh. My two girls are the same. We've been constantly drawing since they could hold a pencil
If you stick at it you can end up doing it for a living, which means you don't have to get a proper job. Result! I spent all my time drawing when I was a kid. If you'd have asked I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd have wanted to draw pictures all day. Luckily, I never grew up, so I just draw pictures all day 😀
I'd love to post up what I've spent my day drawing because I'm so chuffed with how it's come out.`But it's a Christmas commission for a forum member so I can't.
johndoh great stuff there, impressed
I had some watercoulor pencil as a kid (carandache?) They were great, in fact i thought all pencils were like that for a fair while!
Currently watching grayson perry art club, really inspiring and worth a watch
My current favourite medium is biro on post it note. Minimalism distilled.
Grayson's art club is absolutely bloody brilliant!
If you want to be truly gobsmacked by awe-inspiring artistic talent then give Portrait Artist of the Year a go on Sky Arts