Art Materials & Tools for Online Classes
A Fulfilment Program to Complete Session IV
Materials & Tools for Foundations of Studio Practice
Our online fulfillment classes (for Session IV, but in Summer 2020) are designed to allow your youngster—our practitioner—to use a minimal set of materials likely to be found at home, or that can be purchased online rather easily. Your youngster will need the following:
Media
graphite pencils for drawing (if unavailable, school No. 2 and HB pencils will do for now).
color pencils
higher quality crayons
Please avoid: paints, pastels, markers, pens, glittery or goopy stuff.
Materials Kit for Foundations of Studio Practice
- If you plan to have your youngster join our new online programming and online community of creatives in school year 2020/2021, then it may be worth assembling a small foundational kit now. The better kits don’t exist, you purchase the items individually.
- In the art trade, pre-packaged “sets” or “art kits” often feature junk tooling and junk substances. Just as a pianist can’t generate proper notes on a junk piano or guitar, so an artist cannot render tonal techniques on junk paper. It’s not about talent. It’s just physically impossible to do.
- Pre-Covid-19 costs were approximately $40 for all items, not including the carrying box, taxes, fees, and S&H. A shoebox at home will do for keeping the gear safe and organized. The items that make for the kit are listed here.
Children need to be taught to keep their gear in safe storage, and to not handle the stash as if handling toys. We will do so on our end. We appreciate any reinforcing of the issue at home.
Supports
- white computer printer paper to serve as scrap for initial concepts and trial sketches, and for making hand guards.
- Cream or white drawing paper in the weight range of 70 to 90 lbs., where 80lbs. (better understood as weighing 130 g/m2) is ideal. If genuine drawing paper is not available, please allow the youngster to use white or cream-colored fine paper you may have available for formal letters. If not, please revert to computer paper for both scrap and final work. Please avoid sketch pad paper, or other junk.
Tools
- white eraser
- clean duster (no dust on it, please) or a clean, old sock to serve temporarily as a duster.
- a clean, flat, smooth cardboard for mounting the good paper, measuring a little more than 8.5 in x 11 in or less. Make it approximately 10 in x 12 in.
- one plastic or wooden ruler, 12 in.
- two lengths of skinny yarn, any color, each about 12 in. long.
- a school-type pencil sharpener
- a sheet of fine sand paper (350 to 600 grit). Or a clean, dry, smooth stone for shaping the pencil tip in various ways.
- low-adhesion, no-tear, removable masking tape. The typical cream-colored masking tape used by house painters and carpenters is best. Expensive colored versions of masking tape by 3M and its competitors is too strong for our purposes, and will damage finished work at the bitter end, making for bitter tears. For the same reasons, please avoid gift-wrap sticky tape and the likes.
- one clean, non-oily rag
Materials & Tools for P3.O
Every portfolio project is made uniquely, from unique materials, as devised by the student. Students may need to make online purchases for specific materials that their project will require, if those things can’t be found at home. Costs are always based on the student’s plans, which we keep reasonable.
Meanwhile, many special tools, instruments, devices, and substances can be borrowed from our live studio. Please contact us to arrange a store-front pick-up of materials you may wish to borrow.