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Help Kids paint and draw better with quality art supplies

By Spramani

Here’s something I get asked quite frequently “Is it really important young kids use quality art supplies?”

Yes, I believe this 100%, it’s why I dedicated a whole chapter in my book Nurturing Children In The Visual Arts Naturally© – Chapter 16.

Listed below are highlights on this topic!

Free Excerpts from my book, all rights reserved.

Quality Art Supplies

For a child to have art experiences, they need to have access to beautiful high quality art supplies.

Lacking art supplies and accessibility will keep them from becoming artistically skilled.

Skill building and experiments will never take place without them.

Friends and family marvel how my kids draw well and usually comment how they wish they or their own child could draw more or become better at it.

The reason my kids draw and paint well is they have always had quality art supplies from very young ages.

I always provide sketchbooks, drawing pencils, colored pencils and a creative space for my kids and students.

From very young ages they have always had their own sketchbooks and quality drawing supplies.

When they were toddlers their art supplies, of course, were age-appropriate to their development.

Crayons were their first drawing medium, with larger paper to doodle on and appropriate art and craft supplies.

As they matured and got fine motor control, I changed out their supplies to actual artist supplies.

2016 © Spramani Elaun

What if you can’t afford good quality art supplies all the time?

There’s a misconception that getting good quality art supplies means expensive, that’s not what I mean at all.

Buying quality art supplies can make a huge difference in skills developing or sparking a new interest in art making.

Lets take basic drawing and sketching as an example.

Most kids love doodling and drawing, and usually get really good at it between the ages of 9 – 12 years.

So lets say you have a child that loves to draw and you want to know how expensive these materials are going to cost.

Here’s the cost for a basic drawing set-up for a beginner.

A high quality sketch pencil will cost around $3.00.

A professional artist kneading eraser will cost between $3.00 – $5.00.

A quality 9 x 12 sketch book will be around $5.00 – 10.00.

Your grand total for professional quality sketching supplies is under $20.00 a year, that’s without coupons or budget shopping.

For around $20.00 you can buy a professional drawing set-up, that can last for months to even a year depending on how frequent your child draws.

My kids sketch books lasted pretty long.

Funny, thing is the better my kids got  at drawing the longer they take to go through materials.

As kids get more skilled their work becomes detailed, not going through as much art supplies.

You don’t need to stock up an art room full of expensive art supplies to have quality.

A few here and there will work just as well.

Most kids take an interest in one particular art subject which usually takes a good amount of time to explore.

Kids should explore a new art medium or topic every two to three months at the most.

I recommend only investing in three to four quality mediums per school year.

By doing this you can provide good quaintly art supplies at a much lower cost.

With one medium kids can make many different types of projects, it doesn’t have to be the same boring project over and over.

Change the subject matter, but use the same medium.

This is how painters become skillful, they paint different subject matter with the same types of paints for a long period of time.

I know professional watercolor painters that wouldn’t dream of trying another medium!

So don’t feel like you have to buy expensive mediums for kids, just invest in a few quality art supplies here and there to see what they like or are interested in.

But be sure to buy quality!

What quality art supplies to order for kids:

• kids safe acrylic paint set
• drawing paper
• watercolor paper
• crayons
• color pencils
• watercolor pencils
• small watercolor kit
• Sketch Books
• paint brushes
• Drawing Graphite Pencil Set
• DRY Opaque (Gouache) Paint Set

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