Art Art supplies

[Katana]

[color=royalblue][size=1]If there's one thing that has been made clear to me in my time spent with others who draw and such, it's that having an unnatural love for art supplies isn't something that I alone disturb myself with. It's something pretty universal to those I've met in my travels, and also a feeling that is really hard, if nigh impossible to convey to others unless they themselves do what you do.

To start this off...

In the past year, I've learned that I really, really love oil pastels, and that I really like using the Sakura Cray-Pas Expressionist pastels. They're the brand my drawing professor showed the class, so I just went with that. Also, they were reasonably priced. The only bummer with them is that I cannot find them individually stocked anywhere except online, whereas the Van Gogh and Sennelier brands are. So whenever I needed a replacement for a stick, I had to buy Van Gogh (eanneliers are expeeeensive), and that's when I found out I utterly [i]despise[/i] that brand. Okay, italics is harsh, but I really don't like them as much as the Cray-Pas. They feel a bit grittier and dryer and are more difficult to blend with.

On that note, has anyone ever used Senneiler pastels? I've touched them, they are uber!silkysoft, but that'd make me think they'd wear down in no time flat. Also, they're ungodly expensive, which is a huge deterrent for a hobo such as myself.[/size][/color]

[Felix the Cat]

I've always been rather spartanic with my supplies. A sheet of paper and a pencil used to be the way to go until like... one or two years ago when I actually started to try and go for bigger drawings and real detail. Still I haven't really gotten the gist of colouring yet so I'm still stuck with my set of pencils from 4H to 6B and a black pencil (though I don't always use it).

Anyways, since you seem to be a fan of art supplies you might be able to tell me what's a good tool to colour anime character sketches, since I need to do that for my art major and I have NO idea how to (WHY DID I EVER CHOOSE ART?!).

To be honest, the only serious colouring I've done so far is colour pencils which kind of doesn't cut it on the scale of '[i]professional' [/i]that's expected of me.