Alright, continuing on with this short series of videos where I’m talking about how I’ve
revamped my workspace to get the most out of my day, today I wanted to share with you
how I store all of my art supplies and how I’ve laid things out to make this space
as efficient and uncluttered as possible.
Soall the magic happens over here by the window as I almost always use natural light, you
can see how this ties in with the rest of my workspace in my full office tour, linked
at the top.
I’ve made sure that all the art supplies I need are right here to hand on either side
of me while I’m sitting at my desk, so whatever spark of inspiration might take me at any
given time, I always have the means to easily run with it.
So we’ll start over here to the right with this IKEA drawer unit, where I keep my main
set of supplies.
The top drawer holds a kind of curated selection of all of my most used supplies.
9 times out of 10, this is the only place I need to reach for when I’m creating art.
So over here I have cutters and folders, scissors, knives and bone-folders.
I have all the stationery I gravitate to most, a black biro, small ruler, brush pen, quality
fineliner, generic fineliner, mechanical pencil, black pencil and a more rigid tip brush pen.
There’s a load of different erasers, a small selection of washi tapes and sticky notes
and this section of all my pasting supplies; regular tape, glue sticks etc.
Over here are a couple of longer rulers.
This pencil case is ready for anything I might want to take with my for art on the go, along
with anything else in this drawer so, a few of my favourite coloured pencils, a water
brush pen, and a white gel pen and paint marker for highlights.
Then there’s this little spray bottle for wetting my palette, and these are all palettes
and paint selections, just a select few colours that I think work well and I can always easily
go for.
There’s a mixing colours set of Acryla Gouache here, again, mixing colours here of regular
gouache, I’ve just squeezed these out into a bead container off Amazon and that keeps
them moist in there, ready to take out with me, I’ll leave a link below to these, they’ve
really come in handy for creating a stay-wet gouache palette, I have my portable painter
palette here with WH Smith watercolours and a watercolour pallet that I put together recently
with my Daniel Smith watercolours.
This next drawer down is where I keep a load of different pens.
So all the black fineliners here in varying quality, lightfastness, water resistance and
nib size.
Then there are all my other black ink pens from brush pens to sharpies to markers, chisel
tips and some cheaper fineliners too.
Anything that’s got black ink that I don’t use on a day-to-day basis.
Same over here, I have more fineliners of different qualities but these are all different
colours.
I have a sepia and greyscale set from derwent, then a few different colours and a couple
of metallics as well.
This is where I keep my black biros, I used to have loads of these but they go missing
so easily, next to that are coloured biros.
Down here are all my pencils, mechanical and not, lots of different graphite hardness here
too.
I’ve got coloured mechanical pencils with their spare leads.
And up here are different punches, so a regular two-hole hole punch, corner punch, single,
some bulldog clips, a date stamp, long arm stapler, and some….. pins.
We’ll just just pretend that didn’t happen for now…
-Hey guys, so I realised after the trauma of spilling all my pins, I completely skipped
an entire drawer but yeah, that’s where I keep other watercolour palettes, including
a handmade one sent to me by a lovely viewer, details below, and my coloured pencils.
I finally gave in a bought the full set of faber-castell polychromos pencils and I’ve
got a few caran d’ache pencils as well.
Alright moving on swiftly down to the paper drawer.
As with the rest of this unit, these are a handful of my most used papers, the things
I’m most likely to reach for.
Right at the top I have a pad of just plain cartridge paper for rough ideas, and underneath
that are different sizes and brands of watercolour or mixed media paper from Derwent to Strathmore
to Arches, my little bamboo pads right here, and on this side are thicker mixed media boards
and toned paper in grey, tan and blue.
The penultimate drawer holds all my gouache paints.
A mixture of different brands but mainly holbein as I was lucky enough to have them send me
their whole set.
All my paintbrushes are over at the side here, and a few pots of casein for priming pages.
And then the paints themselves are sorted into metallics, black, white and greyscale,
browns, greens, blues, yellows and oranges, and at the back are all my reds, pinks and
purples.
And I always keep the colour chart that comes with the paints so at a glance, I can always
find specifically what I’m looking for.
And right at the bottom, my favourite drawer purely for how perfectly it all fits, this
is the full set of holbeins acryla gouache that, out of the box, slots in perfectly.
And again, I’ve got the colour chart, which is even easier to use in this drawer because
the colour order is exactly the same.
Organsation-wise, you’ll see most of the drawers are sorted into categories with these
acrylic dividers, I’ll have a link to each specific divider if you are interested but
I will say that these add up and I ended up spending more on these altogether than I did
on the actual drawer unit.
A much cheaper option would be to make your own drawer dividers, theyre just as effective,
limitlessly customisable and there are tons of tutorials on YouTube to get you started.
Alright, moving on to the other side, this is where I keep the supplies I use a little
less frequently but still like to have within reach.
In here are a load of my lower quality a4 sketchbooks that are great for rough work,
in here are couple of higher quality sketchbooks and then different papers like this a3 roll
of cartridge paper, wax paper, parchment paper and a few little canvas boards as well.
Next to those on the shelf, I have this box here, where I keep spare watercolour tubes
loosely categorised in colours.
In the shelf below that I keep this container with a few pastels, oil pastels, chalk pencils
and chalk pastels.
And that larger box you saw holds all my markers, copics, Molotow paint markers, some of the
real-colour brush pens, a few of winsor and newtons metallic markers, these fine-tip paint
pens from Derwent and some Posca pens at the back there.
And finally, this is where I keep a few lined notebooks and some coloured and scrap papers.
Smaller scraps I keep in these plastic envelopes.
And then these three boxes here contain some miscellaneous paints that I have in low quantities
so a few oils that I’ve never used, Aqyla, and fabric paint.
This one has some inks.
And this one holds tubes of acrylic paint.
I like to keep things as simple, accessible and as pared-down as I can.
I donate the things I don’t use and keep the things that bring value to my art and
my work.
I know what I have, I know where it is, and thats the best way for me to work.
Next time I’ve got a few tips soon keeping a space neat and tidy, so stay tuned for that
one.
In the meantime, thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you then.
Bye!