Your Expert Guide to Art Supplies in the UK
Sketchbooks under £15 are bound books of drawing paper priced below fifteen pounds in the UK, usually A6 to A4, with paper weights from around 100gsm to 220gsm. The good ones balance paper weight, binding and page count so that everyday practice feels affordable rather than precious. Here’s the thing nobody mentions while you’re loitering … Read more
The spiral bound sketchbook vs hardback debate is really a question of how you want your paper held together. A spiral bound sketchbook threads a metal or plastic coil through punched holes, so pages fold right back and can be separated. A hardback stitches or glues its pages inside a rigid cover, trading flexibility for … Read more
There’s a particular kind of heartbreak reserved for artists: you’ve just laid down a gorgeous wash of ultramarine, the granulation is doing something genuinely lovely, and then you turn the page and watch the ghost of it bleed straight through to tomorrow’s sketch. A hardback sketchbook is supposed to be the fix for that — … Read more
There’s a particular kind of guilt that comes from packing the wrong sketchbook. You know the one — too heavy for the flight, too flimsy for the ferry crossing, or so precious-looking you’re scared to actually use it on a rainy bench in Edinburgh. Choosing among travel sketchbooks for artists shouldn’t feel like defusing a … Read more
Picking the best A4 sketchbooks sounds like it should be simple — until you’re stood in an art shop staring at a wall of near-identical black covers, wondering why one costs £4 and another costs £30. It’s not a random tax on your wallet. It’s paper weight, binding, sizing, and the sheer number of sheets … Read more
Somewhere between “I fancy trying colouring again” and actually clicking “buy,” most people freeze. There are tins with 24 pencils and tins with 150. There are pencils that cost less than a coffee and pencils that cost more than a week’s food shop. A coloured pencil set sounds like the simplest art purchase you could … Read more
There’s a particular kind of magic in watching ink pool at the tip of a metal nib, hang there for half a second like it’s deciding whether to behave, then flow onto paper in a line that’s thick, thin, thick again — all because of how hard you pressed. That’s the appeal of dip pen … Read more
There’s a particular kind of heartbreak reserved for artists who spend an hour on a linework piece, reach for a watercolour wash to finish it off, and watch the lines dissolve into a grey smear right before their eyes. It happens more than anyone admits. The culprit is almost never bad technique — it’s the … Read more
Drawing ink for dip pens is a fluid, pigment or dye-based ink formulated to flow cleanly off a metal nib and dry into a crisp, controllable line, ranging from dense waterproof blacks to transparent washes of colour. If you’ve ever watched an illustrator drag a nib across bristol board and produce a line that goes … Read more
There’s a particular kind of chaos that happens on a calligrapher’s desk. A dip pen nib collection has a way of multiplying quietly — one Nikko G becomes three, then a Brause turns up in a birthday card, and suddenly you’re rummaging through a biscuit tin trying to remember which nib made that gorgeous Copperplate … Read more