Art School FIRST YEAR FRESHMAN. What supplies/ materials should i buy ahead of time?

It depends everything on your classes, and what classes you will be taking. The best thing that you could do is find out who your professors will be, and ask them what kind of supplies you will need. Of course, you can just go ballistic buying all sorts of paints and art things, but you may find that most of it might not be used, so unless you want to play around with more esoteric art forms such as gouache, you could probably save some money buying smarter instead of buying more.

Here is a good starter list that I can think of, and this is stuff that you are guaranteed to use in freshman level courses

Pencils - 4H, 2H, HB, 2B, 4B

kneaded erasers, rubber erasers, and fine tip thin pencil erasers

Bristol board - low tooth paper, good for tight line work

Bond paper - medium tooth paper, good for sketching

Charcoal - Vine and compressed. Charcoal pencils are good for fine detail work, but not critical. 6B charcoal pencil is a safe bets

Chamois rag

newsprint - heavy tooth paper, perfect for drawing with charcoal.

T-square

12 inch metal or wood ruler - essential tools for perspective drawings

Acrylic paint - Acrylics are easy to use and good for beginners, and its likely that you will mostly use only acrylics in your freshman year. No matter what, Black, White, and Primary Red, Blue, and Yellow are good colors to start with, since you can make any color with just those 5 paints. Check with your school about what brand of paint they use (Liquitex, Golden, etc), since different brands designate different colors as a primary color (Liquitex calls its primary blue Pthalo Blue, but Golden calls it Primary Cyan)

Retarder - There are a lot of glazes and additives that you can get for acrylics and oils, but retarder is one that I use a lot. It slows the drying time of the acrylic paint letting you blend the paints more easily, and it also makes them a bit smoother as well. It's not required, but recommended.

Gesso/Matte Medium - A base cover, such as gesso, is always a good idea for painting. There are a lot of different base coats that you can buy, and gesso seems to be the most common and popular, but I prefer Matte Medium.

Illustration board or canvasses - I prefer painting on illustration board, but it depends on your preferences.

Thats a solid core of drawing supplies which will give you a very well rounded pool of resources to build off of, depending on what your professors will require. Good luck

1

Your enthusiasm and desire to get a "head start" on school are commendable.

However, it might be a good idea to wait until you get there (or are sent a syllabus) before you buy anything more basic than some good drawing pencils, art gum eraser(s) and a small sketch book (all of which you could carry with you and fill wherever you go -- not a bad idea in any event, you know!).

I say wait because certain professors will have certain ideas -- quirks even -- about what they want you to have for their course.

The academy I attend organizes a "group buy" of materials twice a year. In September/ October, we can order drawing paper (in several sizes and weights), canvas, oil paints and brushes, all of very high quality and -- more importantly -- at a FRACTION of the cost because we're buying in bulk (with other classmates and even other classes). In the spring it's possible to bulk order pre-stretched high quality canvases in a variety of sizes, also at one-third to half off what one would pay at local art supply stores.

Have a great year, by the way!

Hi there. I'm an art student too.

It's best to start with the basics, and then if you need more specialist stuff, you can get them after the term starts.

Buy a tool box or something similar to store all your stuff and fill it with:

Brushes (of varying thicknesses and shapes)

Watercolour paint

Acrylic paint

Gouache paint

Oil paint

Graphite pencils

Pencil sharpener/ craft knife

Charcoal sticks

Chalk pastels

Fineliners

Oil pastels

Tools for sculpting (inc. cheesewire)

Sponge

Eraser

Scissors

Craft knife

Cutting board

Also buy a few different sketchbooks.

If it also offers textiles:

Scraps of fabric

Needles

Thread

Fabric Scissors

This is just a list of ideas, so don't feel like you have to buy everything on the list.

Best of luck with it!