Everything you need to start sketching (you already own it)

Walk into an art shop and it's easy to leave with a tin of twenty-four graded pencils, three kinds of eraser, a blending stump and a sketchbook that feels too nice to ruin. You don't need any of it to start. Here's the honest list.

The essentials

A pencil. Any pencil. The yellow one from the kitchen drawer is probably an HB, which is a perfectly good middle-of-the-road drawing pencil. If you happen to have one marked 2B, use that: it's a little softer and darker, which makes shading easier.

Paper. Plain printer paper is great for learning, precisely because it's cheap. You'll draw more freely on paper you don't mind wasting. Have five or six sheets ready; some classes, like Figures, fill several.

Light. A table by a window, or with a lamp to one side. Light from one direction gives your still-life objects clear shadows, which is half of what you're learning to see.

That's it. Every class on the timetable is designed to work with exactly this.

Handy, not required

• An eraser. Useful, but you'll learn to draw lightly first, so mistakes barely show. A clean corner of bread works in a pinch, honestly.
• A sharpener. Or a craft knife, which gives a longer point.
• Something with a straight edge. A book or a card helps in Places when you're laying out perspective lines.

Worth buying once you're hooked

If you find yourself drawing every week, these are the upgrades that make a real difference:

Item	Why
A 2B and a 4B or 6B pencil	Softer pencils reach much darker darks, so your drawings get more contrast
A putty eraser	Kneadable, so you can lift out highlights without scrubbing
A sketchbook	Keeps your drawings in order, so you can see how far you've come

None of them costs much. None of them will make you better on their own. The thing that does that is drawing, often, and having someone look at it.