Mechanical pencils offer precice points and need no sharpening, which, in my book, beat out regular wooden pencils any day.

Tortillions are simply made up of rolled-up paper. You use the tip to smear graphite on your shaded drawings, in effect, smoothing out any rough areas  you made not be able to get otherwise. They're cheap, and get the job done.

These erasers are made from nylon, and when you erase when them, they barely scuff the paper at all and give you a very clean erasure. Having a utensil to draw and erase with is a little annoying, but this tool works quite well, so it's worth the frustration.

After a finished sketch, I usually trace over the lines using tracing paper, and high-quality ink pens. I tend to use types that feature fast-drying ink, and non-smearing ink that leaves a nice, thick, dark line.

Whenever you need to make a straight line, rulers are a neccessity, no matter how steady you think your hand is. Angle measures help to get 90 degree angled corners, and the flat compass is perfect for drawing circles.

Plenty artist swear by Strathmore paper, but I hate it. Therfore, I use very cheap Great White computer printing paper. It usually comes in packs of five-hundred sheets for sometimes less than five bucks. Since nearly all my art is digital, no one is going to be seeing the paper anyway, so it doesn't matter how good the quality is.

This is a necessity for my art, as I do all my work on the computer. I do not like to ink straight over my pencil drawing and then after the ink dries, erase the pencil. Many errors can come up, and you"ll ruin your only copy. I trace all my drawings in ink using clear, tracing paper, otherwise known as vellum. This ensures that you have a neat, ink-only copy of your drawing, and if you do mess up, you can start over without losing your work.

Poseable marionettes can be costly, and their range of motion leaves a lot to be desired. Any "super-poseable" Spiderman action figure will do just fine, and they cost less than ten dollars. The one here is a figure from the recent movie, and features double-jointed knees, toe-joints and even finger-joints. All-in-all, it contains thirty moveable joints.

The first step to drawing the human form accurately is knowing it inside and out. This book contains excellently drawn pictures of the body in action, along with what muscle groups are active during each pose. I highly recommend it.

Photoshop has been the industry-standard in digital art for years, and rightly so. There is seemingly no end to what"s possible with this program.

Visit the site for more info at
www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html

Another great program from the folks at Adobe, this software converts raster art to vertex art in seconds, allowing for crisp, smooth lines in your black and white art.

Visit the site for more info at
www.adobe.com/products/streamline/main.html 

Graphire tablets are used to "draw" on your computer. The pen simply acts like a mouse, however, it contains a pressure-sensitive tip, which allows your brush stroke to get thicker the harder you press. Quite a useful product.

Visit the site to find out more at
www.wacom.com/index2.cfm