What are some of your favorite drawing tools (pens, pencils, markers, drawing tablet, all of the above)?

My favorite drawing tools are pencils, ballpoint pens and brush pens. I love switching them around when I work on illustration work.

I love trying something new and making mistakes. I think this progress is essential for artists to grow.

If you have a wide collection, how do you decide on which to use on a particular drawing, project, or day?

I guess it really depends on what kind on project I am working on. I would have to pick materials that I can work faster if a short time is given for the project. I would probably pick something that I can take my time working with if I have extra time for the project.

If you prefer pens, is there any particular brand, color, or type of ink you like best?

I mainly use the pencils from Lyra (Germany) from 8B-4H. These pencils are very smooth and are very comfortable to work with.

How do you like your color? Watercolor? Acrylics? Oil? Colored pencils? Markers?

I use Acrylics the most. It’s because it dries faster. I would love to start using oils when I get a chance though.

I have recently started using Colored pencils as well. They’re fun to mix with Acrylics.

If you do use paints, inks, pencils, or markers for coloring, are there any in particular that are your favorites? Do you prefer travel sets of paints to a full set?

I have been using Ceramcoat paints which are very cheap like one tube for a dollar. I love them because they are really chalky and I love how they look when they’ve dried. It makes an odd texture and it’s great material to give some texture to a piece.

Is there any particular type of notebook or drawing pad you prefer? Or does any scrap of decent-sized paper work in a pinch?

I use the Moleskine. I used to use another kind of sketchbook but I guess they have stopped producing them. I have been looking for a good sketchbook but it’s really hard to find one.

If you paint, is there any particular type of canvas you prefer? Do you like to paint on wood or any other materials?

I normally paint on Stonehenge paper and wood. I work with a lot of layers of paints, as I mentioned, so I like the material to have a harder surface so that it dries faster and I can work efficiently.

Do you ever do any kind of post-processing (like adding color in Photoshop or similar tool) to your drawings?

I often take a photo of my sketch before starting painting to check what colors would work the best. It’s hard to start painting without visualizing how it’s going to be done, so I normally try to use Photoshop to check when I paint.

When I work on illustration, I normally combine both traditional and digital, so I would say 50% of an image is done by traditional and the other is done digitally.

Have you ever tried a new pen (or paper, etc) from reading about it, or seeing the results in another artist’s work?

I have tried so many materials because I love to try out something new. I forget the name of the ballpoint pen Joe Morse (illustrator) uses.

He was teaching a life drawing class one day and I had a chance to see his sketchbook. I was so amazed how fine his line work was.

And I bought the same pen and tried it out. Then I figured it’s not because of the pen, Joe Morse has such an amazing control of pens. He is so amazing.

Do you have anything you use out of the ordinary for making your art?

I often make textures out of Acrylics and scan them in.

If you create purely-digital art, what are the software programs you use? Is one used more than another?

Definitely Photoshop. I am not really good at other software programs to be honest.

If you work both digitally and non-digitally, which do you find yourself doing more? Is there a reason you would prefer one of the other? Is it because of the tools available in either space?

It’s hard to decide actually. I think both of them are very different from each other. I love painting because every decision you make is crucial, so it’s very adventurous. I love digital because it allows me to undo things and try many things, so it’s very adventurous as well.

I asked about post-processing on a computer, but do you think the computer is a helpful tool for making art? Whether it’s looking for inspiration online, or using it to build a weblog to promote yourself and your art, do you think a computer is necessary, helpful, or a distraction (or all of the above)?

I think it’s a helpful tool for making art. Especially when I need to reference something, it’s very accessible and time saving.

It’s a distraction sometimes though. It makes me procrastinate.

Thanks Yuta!

You can find Yuta Onoda online at his portfolio website yutaonoda.com, his weblog, and he is beginning to sell prints of his work at inPRNT.

What are some of your favorite drawing tools (pens, pencils, markers, drawing tablet, all of the above)?

I always have a 9” x 12” sketchbook going but have not drawn too much recently which bums me out. In that I work with Sakura Micron pens and Sharpies.

I also always try to have a softbound small Moleskine in my pocket and a black ballpoint pen so I can sketch on the go.

The watercolor Moleskine and a Waterbrush are a lot of fun.

If you have a wide collection, how do you decide on which to use on a particular drawing, project, or day?

Just depends on the mood I am in. Whether I want color or not, whether I feel like painting or drawing.

If you prefer pens, is there any particular brand, color, or type of ink you like best?

Sakura Microns are great since they are waterproof and come in so many sizes and colors.

How do you like your color? Watercolor? Acrylics? Oil? Colored pencils? Markers?

Acrylic is my main medium. I used to use Liquitex Concentrated in bottles exclusively since they had so many opaque colors but more recently been using Golden fluid acrylics as well.

Daler Rowney FW Acrylic Artists Ink is pretty awesome. You can get so many “watercolor” effects but once it dries stays put.

If you paint, is there any particular type of canvas you prefer? Do you like to paint on wood or any other materials?

Paper bag is generally what I paint on. I like the tooth, the folds and the way opaque acrylics “pop” off the surface. I have started branching out with Arches watercolor paper and Okiwara paper for the acrylic ink and wash effects.

Do you ever do any kind of post-processing (like adding color in Photoshop or similar tool) to your drawings?

No. I scan all my paintings or have them photographed. The only Photoshop action is sometimes tiling together multiple scans of larger pieces.

Have you ever tried a new pen (or paper, etc) from reading about it, or seeing the results in another artist’s work?

The water brush I got from seeing a friend use it and how handy it seemed (water filled handle allows for water to slowly flow out of brush tip). Great for traveling.

The acrylic ink I picked up on a tip from Robert Hardgrave.

Do you have anything you use out of the ordinary for making your art?

Besides the bag, not really. My original bag paintings all had the drawings inked in with a bamboo pen, but now everything is pretty standard.

I asked about post-processing on a computer, but do you think the computer is a helpful tool for making art? Whether it’s looking for inspiration online, or using it to build a weblog to promote yourself and your art, do you think a computer is necessary, helpful, or a distraction (or all of the above)?

Not necessarily a necessity, but the computer has certainly made the process faster for me. I am able to adjust images’ contrast so that they work better for my limited palette style. I also like the fact that I can scan my images and that is about the cheapest, easiest and almost best method of documenting for me. Websites I think are pretty critical for an artists exposure. Sites like Flickr help as well. It sure does become a distraction having a computer in the studio. Hearing the email incoming or just thinking about checking the weather or other online nonsense.

Thanks Chris!

You can find Chris Crites online at his portfolio website bagpainter.com and on Flickr.

What are your favorite drawing tools (pens, pencils, markers, drawing tablet, all of the above)?

My favorite tools are pencils, ballpoint pens and the Pentel brush pens with permanent ink in them, which I purchased while I was living in Japan, god, eight years ago. The Pentel permanent ink is so nice and heavily pigmented that it is really permanent. I made our address sign for the placard at our apartment door with it, and it sat in the full blaze of the Japanese summer sun for two years without a sign of fading.

If you have a wide collection, how do you decide on which to use on a particular drawing, project, or day?

The project is usually going to dictate the medium. If the deadline is tight you need something that’s going to be dry and finished fast, especially when working with paints. For the drawing tools, it depends on what kind of mood you’re going to evoke. If I need a more uniform line weight, I’ll reach for the ball points, if I need verve, power and snap, I’m going to go with the brush pen. If I need some subtlety and variation in tone, it’ll be the pencil.

If you prefer pens, is there any particular brand, color, or type of ink you like best?

For pens, I usually use Papermate pens. The ink comes out of them pretty readily and heavily, and I can get a wide variation out of the line/tone quality. If the ink comes out meagerly or is too liquid, you lose that play and option in the linework. You don’t need those SKG-whatevers that James Jean uses, you just need a ball point where the ink comes out easily but not too liquid. Then you can get all of that lovely “dry-pen” look that he gets.

How do you like your color? Watercolor? Acrylics? Oil? Colored pencils? Markers? All of the above?

I work a lot in oils, which are a very forgiving medium. Watercolors are also a favorite, but to work opaquely over them, I use gouache, which is some of the most unforgiving stuff out there. Mainly because the amount of color and value shift from the wet to dry paint varies widely from color to color, and when you’ve got a mix of them going on, well, you’re never perfectly sure what you’re going to end up with. But I use them anyway, and I’m getting better at predicting how they’ll curveball on me.

Do you prefer travel sets or do you need a full set of colors? If you have a different set of tools for working in your studio (or office, or home, or on the couch) and out in public (at the park, or a coffee shop), what are the differences?

I have a very portable kit that I take with me for sketching. It consists of a cloth fold-over wallet that holds several pens and pencils of different uses, and then a tin that contains a water brush pen and a small watercolor pan set. With those items I can make notations of almost anything I need to out in the field. The only difference between field work water colors and studio watercolors is that in the studio I have a wider selection of tubed gouache paints. In the field, I just mix the watercolors with Chinese White, which is just white gouache.

For plein air oil painting, I use the standard french easel and my full palette, which is a modified version of Richard Schmid’s palette. From left to right on my palette, I lay out: Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue Deep, Viridian, Transparent French Red Ochre, Pyrrolo Ruby (looks like Alizarin but permanent), Cad Red Light, Yellow Ochre, Cad Yellow Deep, Cadmium Primrose (a greenish yellow) and Titanium White. (I’ll use Flake or Zinc white for special effects some times, but Titanium is the workhorse.)

Is there any particular type of notebook or drawing pad you prefer? Or does any scrap of decent-sized paper work in a pinch?

I always have a Moleskine with me, mainly because it’s small and takes pen and pencil well. I don’t use the sketchbook version, just the plain (I get more paper that way!) For bigger sketchbooks, my wife makes them for me out of selections of nicer paper that I buy in sheets and she binds together with covers and coptic binding, which allows the pages to lie nice and flat.

If you paint, is there any particular type of canvas you prefer? Do you like to paint on wood or other material?

I prefer to make my own canvases, because the mass-produced ones are just generally crap: the weave of the fabric is skewed or wavy or the primer is acrylic, which is like sandpaper and can kill nice oil brushes. (I have a nice bristle bright that I used to scrub in some shadows on a 18x24” canvas and when I was done, at least two-thirds of the length was worn away.)

I do increasingly use panels, since they don’t have the give of canvas and I can be assured that when I push the brush into the panel with some force it’s not going to bend and make me miss the mark I was trying to hit. Real Gesso makes excellent panels with traditional panel gesso or oil-primed linen surfaces.

Do you ever do any kind of post-processing (like adding color in Photoshop or similar tool) to your art?

Other than correcting the photos of the artwork to match as closely as possible, not usually. Sometimes I will do some compositing to meet a deadline or accommodate some changes that an Art Director wants.

Have you ever tried a new pen (or paper, etc) from reading about it, or seeing the results in another artist’s work?

Sure! I think most artists do. I’ve tried out Rives BFK after seeing James Jean use it, but the loose nap got on my nerves. My favorite paper for ink and watercolor work these days is Annigoni paper. There’s a light tan version that has a great unifying effect on any colors that go over it and it absorbs ink in a way that makes the ink look like it’s part of the paper instead of sitting on top.

Do you have anything you use out of the ordinary for making your art?

I have some weird brushes, like Epiphanes varnishing brushes and a weird assortment of calligraphy brushes I often use for oil painting, but that’s about as “out there” as I get.

When creating your digital art, what are the software programs you use? Is one used more than another?

I use Photoshop with a Wacom tablet.

If you work both digitally and non-digitally, which do you find yourself doing more? Is there a reason you would prefer one of the other? Is it because of the tools available in either space?

I work digitally on certain projects like storyboards. That way they’re done quickly and are easily editable and I can make quick changes and crank out a set of 10-15 in a day.

I asked about post-processing on a computer, but do you think the computer is a helpful tool for making art? Whether it’s looking for inspiration online, or using it to build a weblog to promote yourself and your art, do you think a computer is necessary, helpful, or a distraction (or all of the above)?

Computers are a great and useful tool, as long as you know what they do well and what they don’t. Promotion by computer is a necessity these days. I can’t imagine getting the word out about my art without it.

Thanks Kurt!

You can find Kurt Ankeny online at his portfolio website and weblog kurtankeny.com and on Twitter (@kurtankeny). You can find out more about the classes he teaches at ankenystudio.com.

What are some of your favorite drawing tools (pens, pencils, markers, drawing tablet, all of the above)?

Good old F and H pencils are what I’ve been using lately. Col-erase pencils are fun as well. For sketching I quite like brush pens that you can cut up and cheap ballpoint pens that leak and do funny things are great.

If you have a wide collection, how do you decide on which to use on a particular drawing, project, or day?

Depends how I’m feeling. Some mediums are more forgiving that others and things either lends themselves to good drawing days or not.

If you prefer pens, is there any particular brand, color, or type of ink you like best?

I found these really cheap, almost poorly made black dollar store pens made by a brand called Menji. They’re not really good writing pens per say but great to sketch with. I find pens that do sometimes unexpected things are more satisfying to sketch with and things turn out to be a bit spontaneous.

How do you like your color? Watercolor? Acrylics? Oil? Colored pencils? Markers?

I really like watercolour and gouache, though I don’t consider myself very proficient with either medium. Coupled with pencil crayons and Photoshop, the mix is interesting to work my colour with. I have a love/hate relationship with Acrylics. Sometimes they do what I want and other times they drive me up the wall as I’m not the fastest worker. I’d really like to get back into oil painting like my early art school days.

If you do use paints, inks, pencils, or markers for coloring, are there any in particular that are your favorites? Do you prefer travel sets of paints to a full set?

Paints, I generally stick to Winsor & Newton and Golden, but I haven’t branched out much. I’m ashamed to say I bought a pocket watercolour set recently, but have yet to put it to any good use yet.

Is there any particular type of notebook or drawing pad you prefer? Or does any scrap of decent-sized paper work in a pinch?

I sketch mostly in my Moleskine sketchbook, but any heavyweight drawing paper is good. Bond paper is okay too.

If you paint, is there any particular type of canvas you prefer? Do you like to paint on wood or any other materials?

I like to paint on heavyweight paper (140-300 lbs watercolour paper block is nice) or cheap scraps of masonite.

Do you ever do any kind of post-processing (like adding color in Photoshop or similar tool) to your drawings?

I use Photoshop quite often in terms of applying colours or tweaking, but not exclusively. Lots of the foundation work is done in gray scale with traditional media, with colour applied afterward.

Have you ever tried a new pen (or paper, etc) from reading about it, or seeing the results in another artist’s work?

Sometimes. Much more satisfying to experiment and muck about on your own.

Do you have anything you use out of the ordinary for making your art?

Nope, can’t say that I do.

If you work both digitally and non-digitally, which do you find yourself doing more? Is there a reason you would prefer one of the other? Is it because of the tools available in either space?

Lately it’s been half and half, but I find myself pushing towards traditional methods more and more. With no undo key, it keeps you on your toes and at the end of the day feels more fulfilling to me.

I asked about post-processing on a computer, but do you think the computer is a helpful tool for making art? Whether it’s looking for inspiration online, or using it to build a weblog to promote yourself and your art, do you think a computer is necessary, helpful, or a distraction (or all of the above)?

I don’t think it’s necessary at all really. Walk into an art museum and look at a masterwork on the wall and that’ll say enough. If anything it’s been bad and good. Bad in the sense that it can be a crutch, where you can come to rely too much on simple tricks, smoke and mirrors and what not. Things can look mechanical or devoid of any personal human touch. Really depends on the industry you work in too. They’re indispensable when it comes to things like concept art where you can quickly make edits and pump out variations of pieces in relatively short time.

I’d have to say they sometimes help take the edge off my short comings as an artist, but I find them convenient at the same time. In saying that though, I make more of an effort these days to use the computer as a post processing tool because I really prefer putting real media to whatever canvas I choose. That’s fundamental.

Thanks Ed!

Ed Kwong can be found online at his portfolio website edkwong.com and on his weblog.