Household Items Used in Artwork

How You Can Find Art Supplies at Home for Drawing and Painting

Nov 26, 2007 Venice Kichura

If you're just starting out as an artist, you can easily overspend on art supplies. However, you probably already have several items at your house that you can use.

If you’re just starting out as an artist, you can easily overspend on art supplies. However, you probably already have several items at your house right now that can be used for your painting and drawing projects.

Household Materials Used as Art Supplies for Watercolor

• Masking tape: You can safely use masking tape on heavier watercolor paper or illustration board. Because the adhesion is greater on smoother hot-pressed surfaces, you’ll want to choose rougher, cold-pressed paper, as well as heavier selections.

• Salt: Salt is an excellent masking tool used for everything from creating snowflakes to rain. Simply apply a wet wash and then sprinkle salt in the sky for instant falling rain or snowflakes. You can also splatter salt on a rock to give the effect of speckles. Rock salt is also great for creating elements of weather.

• Old toothbrushes : Don't throw away those old toothbrushes, as they can be used to create grass, brush, and so on. What’s more, it makes a nifty splattering tool. For example, you can load a dark-colored wash and splatter it, producing pebbles and speckles on rocks.

• Knives: Both table knives and pocket knives are good tools for scraping away color, as well as creating distance trees and foreground grass and bushes. Artists also use knives to create tree bark.

• Egg cartons: Save your old egg cartons for mixing washes. They can also be used for acrylic washes.

Household Materials Used as Art Supplies for Acrylics and Oils

• Masking tape: Besides using masking tape for watercolor, you can also apply masking tape to your acrylic and oil paintings. Used on gesso-treated canvas, masking tape is a good way to mask out color. It can be used to cover everything from a large surface to minute details (such as masking out small fence posts.

• Paper plates: These are good for mixing paints.

• Meat trays: The white color of meat trays make them another great surface for blending paints.

Household Materials Used as Art Supplies Drawing and Painting with Pastels

• Q-tips: Use these for applying layers of pastel dust to the painting. The cotton tip is just tiny enough to add a dab of pastel dust to a painting, as well as to blend colors.

• Cotton balls: Use cotton balls for blending soft chalk pastels.

• Notebook paper: Used for blending soft pastels, notebook paper can be substituted for the commercial paper stumps found in art supply stores.

Household Materials Used for Art Supplies in Drawing

• Coffee cans: Not only do they hold water, but can also be used for sorting colored pencils.

• Erasers: The erasers you use for everyday pencils are narrow and sharp enough to lift out color.

• Electric pencil erasers: If you already have an electric eraser, this does an even better job. For example, when you want to depict dewdrops on either a pencil drawing or a colored penciled rose, there’s nothing better for lifting out color to make it look realistic.

Finally, you can multi-task your laundry baskets. Besides being used for laundry, they’re also excellent for storing your art supplies. The more money you save using household items for your art supplies, the more you’re able to spend on better quality paints, art paper and brushes.

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White backgrounds are good for mixing paints