Nothing cramps the style more effectually than block or book of a minute size.
Buy pencils of a medium quality—HB, B, or BB. BBB's are useful for soft and sympathetic studies, for rich shadows and textures.
Rubber of soft crumbly substance is preferable to hard or gummy rubbers; ink-eraser should never be used, it destroys the surface of the paper.
A sketch-book, a pencil, a piece of paper, and a knife—these are all that are required for a start.
If you wish to draw on a larger scale, you must buy paper by the sheet, which necessitates a drawing-board, drawing-pins, and an easel. Easels are stocked in every quality, size, shape, and description, and listed in all the colourmen's catalogues.
For water-colour painting you require a small colour-box (japanned boxes are lighter and more useful for sketching purposes than wooden boxes), a moderate range of colours, and a couple of good camel-hair or sable brushes.
Good brushes are essential. You can trim your pencil, your chalk, your charcoal to suit your various needs, but you must abide by the brush. A brush that spreads and splits, or that moults its hair over the paper, will be of little use. A large full brush and a small brush will suffice for every purpose. Or, if preferred, one full brush of a medium size (number five or six) with a fine point will do the work of two.
When choosing a brush dip it in a pan of water and roll the point on the hand or on a piece of paper, to make certain that it has a good point.
The old-fashioned hard cakes of paint had many excellent qualities; the colours were lasting and good, but the rubbing process was certainly tedious, and they are seldom seen nowadays. The half-pans of moist paint have taken their place; they are not wasteful, provided they are used with ordinary care. On the other hand, tubes of paint—bearing in mind that we invariably squeeze out more colour than is necessary—are, most decidedly, extravagant.
