Starting a new degree in a field I knew next to nothing about meant I had no idea what tools I would and wouldn’t use. Here’s my list, broken in to must-haves, conditional and upgrades.
must have!
DRAWING
- rollerball,
- 0.1 0.4 0.8 fine liner
- thick brush pen
- highlighters
- Tipp-Ex pen
- Pencils: 2B, HB
- Sharpener
- Coloured pencils, blue, pink, 2 green, one grey
Simple is best. Fewer options makes it significantly easier to start putting pen to paper. One book and a small collection of pens will do- a rollerball for quick lines/writing, brush for titles and fine liners to draw with. Tipp-Ex pen as a bit of a curve ball, can be used for labelling all your new equipment and creatively in hand renders. Pink pencil for doing highlights and works great when you’re drawing skies.
MISC
- Baking paper
- A4 notebook
- Invisible tape
- Sticky notes
- Ruler: metal, converter, curvy boi
Baking paper is effectively exactly the same as trace paper for a quarter of the price. Invisible tape is just better than regular sticky tape. The curvy boi is some top-tier stationery, it will allow you to hand draw super smooth curves.
Don’t buy things you have no idea how to use yet, just stick to the basic stuff- you can always get more when you need. No use ending up with a very expensive box full of Copics that you have no idea how to use (me).
conditional!
- A3 drawing board
- Circle template
- Cutting mat
- Knife
- Quality scissors
This are all things you potentially might not use – ie. hold off on purchasing these. Most of these things I didn’t touch until second or third year. The A3 drawing board is something I did wish I had a little earlier though. If you don’t want to be constantly reshuffling your desk, you can just tape what you’re drawing to this and move it around, handy if your kitchen bench also doubles as your drawing surface. Being able to tilt the board to draw on an angle is also super nice. The fancy black rubber is just cool.
upgrades!
- Refillable COPIC fine liners
- Notebooks: better paper, lay flat options, different sizes etc.
- iPad/apple pencil with paper-like screen protector
- Watercolours
- Alcohol markers
Now the more fun stuff. When you’ve committed to landscape architecture as a degree/career, you get to spend more money on marginally better equipment! These Copic fine liners are sick. The nibs and ink are replaceable, saving you throwing out entire pens when the ink starts to run dry or the nib gets useless. I’ll be replacing all my fine liners with these eventually. iPad/pencil combo is great fun. The paper-like screen protector is a must and Procreate has to be one of the best value apps out there. Definitely doesn’t replace paper, but obviously has a tonne of other benefits. The mini is also small enough to present with as it can be held in one hand and looks a bit more professional (in my opinion) than shifting through paper palm cards or holding your phone.
A lot of this stuff you can pick up in any decent stationery shop, but you can save significant $ by looking on Facebook Marketplace. There are plenty of design students that don’t make it and are left with a myriad of barely touched equipment that they want to get rid of.
Early on, less is more. Don’t overspend, hang out with other students and see what they’re using and how. Get shopping.
Reed 
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