What Equipment Do You Need To Be An Illustrator?

Useful equipment includes:

Paints – watercolours, acrylics and oils etc will be needed to produce illustrations. Which type of paints you purchase depends greatly on your style.

Pencils – good quality pencils are useful.

Sketch pad – there are many types of sketching pads to suit different media, so take a look around an art shop and get advice on which ones are best used with certain media.

Charcoal – charcoal is useful for producing quick sketches.

Pastels and oil pastels – pastels are soft and easier to use than oil pastels. It depends on which you prefer.

Design programs such as Adobe PhotoShop, InDesign or Illustrator – these are useful for digital illustrations and can be used to add lighting effects to your illustrations or to make adjustments to your paintings, such as editing out mistakes etc.

Reference material – you may need reference material to help you with your drawings. You can use the internet for this (though be careful of copyright issues) or books.

A digital camera – you can use a camera to take photos and produce illustrations from them.