What tools does an artist need?

I am often asked about the tools I use to make art. I use a lot of tools on a day to day basis for Overgrowth depending on what job I am doing. Some of these have taken me years to learn:

• 3DS Max 9 for 3D modeling
• Mudbox 2009 for 3D sculpting
• xNormal for baking normal maps and ambient occlusion
• Crazybump for making tangent space normal maps from heightmaps
• Photoshop CS2 for making 2D art and color textures for 3D objects
• Wacom Cintiq 12WX tablet for drawing input into Photoshop

All of them are pretty critical, but the most important tools I have used as an artist are a lot cheaper and easier to use:

• Paper
• Pen

The fact is that the basics of art are the same no matter what tools you are using, so if you are just starting out you may as well use what is available. I still like to sketch in my notebook now and then. Even with all those fancy programs, the amount of control and immediacy I get with pen and paper beats anything with the computer.

Here are some sketches I made the other day after I took the train into San Francisco:

I used to draw in pencil, but these days I like the pen more. Since there is no way to erase mistakes it forces me to pay closer attention to what I am doing. Are there any other artists here? What tools do you use? Feel free to post links to your own sketches!