Tools of your trade

[abnegation]

Something that varies massively among artists and designers, is the tools that they use in their work. For designers, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop are necessities, for some digital painters Paint Tool SAI is a large part of their arsenal, and for Pixel Artists Graphics Gale or Paint can be their canvas.

The question I pose is, what kind of tools do you use? Be they traditional or digital. How do you use them and how is your workflow improved by their existence?

 

[Sableye~]

Digitally, the program I use depends on exactly what I'm drawing. If it's going to be a black/white sketch that I'll need layers for, then I use Autodesk Sketchbook Xpress (which I only have because it came with my tablet). It's a real pain to use for anything else, though, because I only can choose from its bright, unattractive colors.

For sprite recolors / general pixel art, Paint. It isn't ideal (to me) for drawing under normal circumstances, but the lack of layers and simplicity work out alright in this case.

Everything else I use Photoshop Elements for (if possible; it lags a lot sometimes). If it's lagging too much for me to use it, then I end up sketching with Paint and switching it over to Photoshop for editing (it seems to work okay if I'm editing something I already drew on a different program).
I use an old Bamboo Pen and Touch tablet for all digital art, although it doesn't always want to work.

Traditionally, I'm pretty boring...just whatever paper I have on-hand and a mechanical pencil. I do have better quality pencils, but I just don't like them, honestly. I've been just using whatever pencils were nearest to me since I began learning how to draw more seriously (which was years ago). I do like having my kneaded eraser and blending tools around, though, otherwise I end up with dark gray fingertips.

 

[Nolafus]

My toolbelt includes pencils, and a several erasers. More recently, colored pencils have made their way into my supplies box as well. I don't have a tablet and I don't exactly want to draw using the mouse, so pencils it is! :D

Edit: I also have a smudging tool I found on the floor at my old high school. Or is it called a blurring tool? All I know is that it's made of rolled up paper and it's really good for shading.

Wow, everyone has all these fancy gadgets and tools. I feel so cheap. XD

 

[Fairy]

Ah, too many to list.

On the traditional side, I've got a mass collection of sketching pencils of varying hardness/softness depending on what I'm sketching and a mess of medium quality sketch books, that often get dismissed for lined paper when I get bored in class so boo. Then I have a plethora of inking pens, which can be as expensive and amazing as copic, to as lowly and cheap as sharpies. Anything that I fancy in the moment, I suppose. I also have a very large collection of blending tools, and shades of both warm and cool grey alcohol markers. I think I like those the best. When it comes to my shades of grey, I tend to always buy on the expensive side. I sincerely hate it when I get those gross "in between" lines. \( #`⌂´)/

On the digital side, I've got my computer, of course! And my VisTablet Realm, naturally. Along with my tablet came a copy of Photoshop CS7 Elements, which is upwards of $300, so I couldn't waste it and more often that not use that for my art, despite it being best used for photo manipulation. I do also use GIMP as it's more accommodating for artists and better serves artistic purposes. I have never used Paint SAI, although I am very aware of how good it is as an illustration program. I just never got around to it.

I'm not quite adept with digital art yet, as I've only been doing it for less than a year. Needless to say I have a lot to learn. But I'm not in any hurry, so if one program doesn't fulfill my needs, I'll try out another. (〜￣▽￣)〜