I'm Eugenia, a book illustrator, mostly for children's and “cottagecore” illustrations. I paint traditionally, mostly using watercolor and gouache. When I started I wanted to try out all the paints and art tools in the world. I spent literally thousands of dollars into buying more and more paints, only to eventually realize that I didn't need that much. To create professional work, all you need is a few specific tools, that shouldn't cost more than $250 or so. Here is a list of what I'd suggest buying if you're interested in becoming a traditional illustrator.

• The Lukas 24 watercolor palette of student grade ($23, https://www.jerrysartarama.com/lukas-studio-watercolor-set-24-hal-fpan-accessories-v31536 ). It’s good enough and these days most paintings are scanned, so even if not all colors are lightfast, it’s not a big deal. Few people only buy originals, most go for prints. If you’re going to go selling originals, consider the Daniel Smith primaries set of 6 colors for $40 instead.

• A set of brushes of different sizes, including a flat brush and round brushes including a long thin one to do details, $15

• Pencil, eraser, sharpener, $15

• A set of gouache, which can be a great introduction if you later want to do acrylics or oils (in terms of how its opaque paint feels). Best bang for the buck for professional quality is DaVinci brand ($10 per large tube), or if you want to go cheap, the Himi Miya set for $25. If you go for the cheaper stuff, it’s still advised to get a better quality white tube, so it’s truly opaque (the cheap stuff aren’t opaque enough). So go for Holbein or DaVinci white for $10-$15. If you decide to go with DaVinci paints, get a yellow, an orange-red, a magenta, ultramarine blue, cyan, phthalo green, burnt umber, white, and black. These are the important colors that will allow you to mix all the other colors in the color wheel.

• Soft-core colored pencils, set of 48+. $15 (you will mostly need the muted colors to enhance the painting with harder edges)

• Grey, sepia, and black waterproof ink pens, and manga ink brush pens (for some types of paintings only), $40

• 100% cotton paper for watercolor $25, or any watercolor paper for gouache $10 (gouache works on any, watercolor is more nuanced).

• Brush watercolor markers, e.g. Tombows or Ecoline – in case you want to do such type of illustration too, $30 for a few muted colors. But that one is optional, since it creates a specific kind of look.

• Masking fluid for watercolors, $10

• White gel pen, and white Posca pen (0.7mm) for white highlights, $15

• Faber Castell white pencil soft pastel, $4

• Caran d’ache Luminance white colored pencil, $4 (the cheaper colored pencils above again don’t include a strong white)

• Caran d’ache Neocolor II white crayon, $4

• A ruler, to help you sketch.

I included various mediums above in white color because highlights are king in illustration, and each provides a different look and feel, depending on the painting.

So, that's it, happy painting! You can view my artworks at the federated, open source PixelFed site: https://pixelfed.social/EugeniaLoli