While an artist may use a mechanical or No. 2 pencil, they might also want to consider pencils with harder and softer leads for things such as shading, cross-hatching and outlines. The strength of the lead ranges from 8B to 4H, hard to soft, with the 2B pencil being the equivalent of a No. 2 or school-grade pencil. There are also pencils designed so that when the artist uses them, the weight doesn't change, even when the lead is used. Some brands a new artist might want to try include Faber-Castell, Prismacolor and Derwent.
One of the more popular brands when it comes to artist-grade pens is the Micron pen. These pens come with different-sized points or tips. An artist can use these pens to draw lines with a different thickness to show things such as light, shadow and highlights. Another pen anime artists might use is the Rapidograph. Like the Micron, these pens come in varying sizes and are available as both a set and individually. Each pen has an inkwell artists can refill once the ink is gone. Pens that use an inkwell are ideal for just about any artist as they allow for solid, free-flowing lines.
The two best-known artist-grade markers include Copic and Prismacolor. The Prismacolor markers are round, have both a fine and a fat tip and are alcohol-based, which means they dry extremely quickly. Unfortunately, this also means the artist must be able to color quickly while still staying in the lines to avoid streaking or creating dark, overlapping layers. The Prismacolor markers are better for coloring in small areas whereas Copics are all-around markers. Copics have flat sides to keep from rolling off the table. Like the Prismacolors, Copics also have two tips and come with inkwells an artist can refill by purchasing additional ink, similar to a printer's ink cartridge.
Bristol board comes in varying sizes, from as small as 6 inches square to 14-by-17 inches tall. There are two grades of Bristol board: "smooth" and "vellum." The smooth grade is for ink and marker while the vellum is better for artists using watercolor or colored pencil. The reason for this is because the vellum has what artists call a tooth, or a bit of grain able to hold onto the pigment. Each pad of Bristol board comes with 20 sheets. The paper itself is a little more than twice the thickness of regular card stock.