Art materials

Digital

I've been using Clip Studio Paint since 2017 or 2018. It has a shockingly inexpensive one-time purchase price (and goes on sale pretty frequently on top of that) and is overall superior to Photoshop for art in every conceivable way. They recently added Photoshop brush importing in addition to some Photoshop-esque brush editing features, which is wonderful. Prior to my conversion to CSP, I used very legally obtained Photoshop. There are still some things I prefer Photoshop for, but CSP is more than enough 95% of the time.

Traditional

My paint of choice is gouache. The finish on it is beautiful, and the technique makes so much more sense to me intuitively than other paint mediums. I use traditional gouache (as opposed to acrylic gouache) because I like being able to reactivate the paint. For general screwing around, I use the Caran d'Ache palette. The price is pretty good for the amount of paint you get, and having premixed colors is great when you just want to sit down and paint something without the hassle of paint mixing. You don't get the buttery thick paint you get from a tube, but they layer very well. For more serious painting, I use Holbein; I only use CMYK (and white) paints and mix everything myself. The paints are expensive, but a little lasts an incredibly long time, hence why I like being able to reactivate them. The texture is great and they mix incredibly well. I prefer CMY to RBY because it makes it super easy to mix colors that I've picked on the computer, but there's no huge difference in how they actually perform. I also have a giant tube of Permanent White from Windsor and Newton.

The ink I use is Dr. Ph. Martin's Bombay India ink. They're on the pricier end; I happened to get a set on sale, but I'd gladly pay full price for them because they're that good. The colors are vibrant and mix really well. I use Speedball dip pens. My favorite nib for drawing is the #101 because it's relatively easy to control the line weight on it. It's also a good calligraphy nib, but I don't really love doing pointed pen calligraphy, so it usually just gets used for drawing. My favorite calligraphy nibs are the C-series ones.

I own... basically every Sakura Gelly Roll pen because they're good for just about everything. I particularly love the white and clear glitter one. The metallic ones are also really good for glittering up a painting.

The rest of what I use is pretty unspectacular; I just use whatever pencils I have lying around, the nice Pentel eraser, whatever cold press paper is on sale, and the crap-ish budget brushes from Michaels because gouache wears brushes out fairly quickly. On that note, be aware that I've been drawing for a while and I only started investing in pricier supplies once I figured out what I liked - you definitely don't need anything fancy to get into it!