Starting to Draw or Paint? The Beginner's Art Supply Guide for Pakistan
Co-founder, Markaz ·
Every art-supply aisle is a trap for beginners: forty-colour sets, seven kinds of paper, and the quiet fear that talent lives in the expensive box. It doesn’t. Skill comes from mileage, and mileage comes from cheap, replaceable materials you’re not afraid to waste. Here’s the honest starter kit for each path — all of it orderable from the Stationery shelf on Markaz with cash on delivery.
Sketching: the cheapest entry in art
Needed: two pencils (an HB and a 4B or 6B), an eraser, a sharpener, and any plain sketchbook — that’s the whole kit. Skipped: the 12-pencil tin (three grades cover a year of learning) and anything marketed as “professional”. The real purchase is the habit: one page a day, bad drawings welcome, the sketchbook exists to be filled rather than admired.
Watercolour: buy fewer colours than feels right
A basic 12-colour pan set, two round brushes (one big, one small), and thick paper — ordinary paper buckles and convinces beginners they’re bad. Mixing your own greens and oranges from a small palette teaches more colour theory in a month than a 36-set teaches in a year.
Urdu calligraphy: the most rewarding niche
Khattati is enjoying a genuine revival — and it starts with a qalam or a broad-edge marker, ink, and lined practice sheets. Begin with a single letter family a week in nastaliq; the payoff curve is steep and deeply satisfying. A beginner’s khattati guide from the Learning Books shelf shortens the road considerably.
Kids’ art: quantity over quality, always
For children the rule inverts harder: big cheap paper stacks, chunky crayons, washable markers, one glue stick and safety scissors. Abundance beats preciousness — a child with unlimited rough paper draws daily; a child with one nice sketchbook saves it forever. Pair with activity books from the Kids’ Books shelf.
The one rule for every path
Spend on paper, save on everything else, and upgrade only what you exhaust. The artist who finishes three cheap sketchbooks earns the good one — and by then knows exactly what to buy.
Order the kit
Everything above ships from the Stationery shelf with cash on delivery nationwide — most orders arrive in 3–5 business days. Building the school kit at the same time? The back-to-school checklist covers it in one order.
