Children are encouraged to learn their colors and work with them in art from the minute they start school. To work in color with your art, we recommend making a box to sort colored markers, pencils, or crayons by color as well as making labels. Then you can easily distinguish shades of color within each color without looking at labels. But when she got older my daughter ditched color in her art to focus on grayscale art, and is much happier for it. We recommend grayscale art very much—it is freeing. See below for grayscale art supplies.

Here is an example of coloring book art in grayscale: 

Sorting Box for Colored Markers / Pencils / Crayons

Use cardboard and hot glue to make a box with 6 or more compartments. (First make the box, then make dividers.) Label them around the outside of the box with the primary colors. Fill them with colored pencils or markers. Remember to use your label maker to label each marker or pencil. Labels along the body of the marker/pencil work as do flags at their ends. 

 

Grayscale Art supplies

Warning: These recommendations are from a teenage artist who has moved beyond washable inks and paints. Will stain!!

Copic Sketch Markers in Neutral Grays: Once your artist is past needing washable ink, there is a wonderful rainbow of gray markers from Copic. These are high quality artist’s markers in many shades of gray to black. We recommend sketch markers in neutral gray 0 through 10 (N0S, N1S, N2S, N3S, N4S, N5S, N6S, N7S, N8S, N9S, N10S) and Black 100 (100S) . You can get a set with 5 of the grays (N0S, N2S, N4S, N6S, N8S) and then purchase the rest individually. A marker wallet is worth it to keep them organized. The markers are expensive, but when they run dry you can buy ink refills rather than replacing the whole marker.

 Faber-Castell Greys: Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen soft brush greys are also great. They make a nice set of 8 greys. Add a black pen separately.

Pencils: Soft pencils. E.g. try Faber-Castell 8B. 

Acrylic Paints: You only need to purchase two colors—black and white (get large sizes). But buy lots of resealable paint pots (Target brand “twist and store” 4oz containers work well—a set of 6 is under $4), and a tray (like this ~$2 “muffin pan”) to hold them to mix every shade of gray. The target containers don’t stop the paint from drying out if you store it a long time, but work for keeping paint fresh one day to the next.