Megan J Seiter

Canson Mi-Teintes Touch Paper Pad

If you’re detail oriented, patient, and work in layers, this paper is well worth trying. Mi-Teintes Touch Sanded Pastel Paper is a 350 gsm paper that’s treated with a sanded surface that feels similar to a fine grit sandpaper. It can hold dozens of light layers of pencil, and the finished result has a very unique finished texture. This paper will ‘eat’ your pencils faster than other papers — but it’s well worth the effort. Mi-Teintes Touch is available in 11 colors and several sizes, and 12 sheet pad is a great way to dip your toe in the water if you’re curious to give it a try.

Sakura EE-3000 Sumogrip Electric Eraser

This electric eraser can be a lifesaver if you’ve layered too much pencil on your paper or if you’ve made a mistake that needs fixing.

Legion Rising Museum Board

Whether you work in light layers or you like to burnish, this museum board is an excellent option for colored pencil drawings. The texture of Rising Museum Board is a more traditional surface for colored pencil, and works well with mixed media drawings. It’s available in several plies and a variation of whites, greys, and black. You can find this board at most local art stores.

Frisket Matt Masking Film

If you decide to incorporate PanPastel into the background of your drawings, you can use Frisket Film to mask off your subject so that the paper remains clean in the areas that you don’t want your pastel. It’s a low-tack, soft-peel, self-adhesive, translucent masking film. You can draw your sketch onto the mat film, cut it out, place it on your drawing, and create smooth gradients with your pastel — without having to carefully work around the subject matter.

Slice Precision Cutter 10416

The slice cutter features a long-lasting ceramic blade that’s safe to use and very effective at gently carving thin lines out of a colored pencil drawing. You can use it to “draw” the whiskers of an animal, fur and hair, and the fine veins in a leaf, to name a few.

Sofft Blending Sponges

PanPastel makes this brand of art sponges, which come in a variety of sizes and shapes. The sponges can be cleaned and reused by rubbing them on a papaer towel until you stop seeing pigment rub off the sponge.

PanPastels

PanPastels work absolutely beautifully alongside colored pencils. They’re quick to apply, they go on smoothly, and with a few layers they’re opaque and highly pigmented. You can create beautiful gradations with them, and you can make your own colors by blending two or more pan colors together. I use PanPastels to fill in the background color of my pencil drawings, and to create the shadows that are cast by my subject matter.

Kum Handheld Pencil Sharpener

When it comes to sharpeners, the simpler they are the better they tend to work. I prefer to manually sharpen my pencils so that I can see how sharp they’re getting, and so that I can angle the pencil into the sharpener if needed. These Kum sharpeners are inexpensive, simple, and create a very sharp pencil tip.

Kum Sharpener Spare Blades

Please don’t forget to replace the blade on your sharpener! It makes a world of a difference. I replace mine in between every drawing (and sometimes more)!

Daylight Techne LED Artist & Drafting Lamp

I wouldn’t be able to work without this light. It features an easy mount, a swivel arm, and a daylight bulb that is neither warm nor cool, so it won’t throw off your colors. It also has three brightness settings, the highest of which is ideal for fine detail work.

Epson Expression 10000XL Wide-Format Scanner

Digitizing your artwork is so important. It allows artists to share their work on social media and on a personal website, and is the first step toward making high-quality prints. Most colored pencils are wax-based and often finish with a slight sheen — which can lead to glare issues — so scanning your work will yield a better digital reproduction than using a camera. This scanner is an investment but it produces high quality, accurate, and glare-free digital images. The lid comes completely off so you can scan large drawings in segments, which can be stitched together in Photoshop.

Self-Healing Cutting Mat

This cutting mat has lasted me a LONG time, and I use it for everything: cutting my drawing paper, preparing originals and prints for shipping, cutting mat board down to size, etc.!

White Cardboard Craft Tubes

If you’re looking for an easy, inexpensive, and beautiful way to store your colored pencils — here it is! These are white craft tubes that you can use to organize your pencils.

Mahl Stick

A Mahl Stick is a thin stick with a ball at one end. The ball rests on the top of your easel or table, and the stick offers support for your hand so that you don’t smudge your drawing. Colored pencils will inevitably drop little bits of pigment on your paper while you’re working, which can easily be removed with a kneaded eraser. If you use a Mahl Stick, there’s no chance that you’ll accidentally smudge that loose pigment into your paper!

Vertical Flat File

Artwork storage can claim a lot of space in the studio, especially with a traditional flat file. I use this Vertical file to store my paper, drawings, mat boards, cutting mat, etc. At 42 x 12 x 29 inches, it can store boards and sheets of paper up to 24 x 36 inches without taking up much room. It’s an excellent use of space and is a relatively inexpensive alternative to a traditional flat file.