Art Stocking Stuffer Gift Guide: Nine Small Gifts That Actually Get Used

Introduction

Stocking fillers have a bad reputation. Too often they end up being cheap trinkets that get forgotten by January. This list takes a different approach: every item here is small, inexpensive, and genuinely useful to an artist. None of them will break the budget, and all of them will earn their place in a toolkit long after the holidays are over. There is no particular order, and every one of these fits comfortably in a stocking.

Caran d’Ache Palette

The Caran d’Ache palette is a two-sided mixing surface, with a rough side and a smooth side, and it earns its spot year after year. The smooth side works well with water-soluble markers, letting you mix colors and pick them up with a blender before applying them to your work. The rough side is excellent for water-soluble pencils and waxy crayons: apply as many colors as you like, add water, and mix directly on the palette.

The real value shows up for anyone working with a limited set of watercolor pencils. If you can only afford a set of twelve, a palette like this transforms what those pencils can do, because you can build a much wider range of mixed colors with more control than mixing on paper allows. If a color is not dark enough, you just keep adding pigment or water on the palette the same way you would with watercolor pans. You can improvise something similar with a textured plastic chopping board, but this purpose-built version is the one worth reaching for.

Derwent Canvas Wrap

The Derwent canvas wrap is a very inexpensive solution to a very common problem: sketching away from a desk. When you are sitting on a park bench or anywhere without a flat surface in front of you, the wrap unclips and folds out, and the elastic bands keep every pencil in place even when you drape it over your knee.

That makes it ideal for pencil artists who sketch on the go, but it is equally useful at home as a neat way of keeping pencils together. Unclip it, roll it out, and everything is laid out in front of you while you work. Everything slots back in place when you are done.

Pentel Water Brushes

There are plenty of water brushes on the market now, and many companies make versions. What sets the Pentel water brushes apart is the shape and the way they hold in the hand. They fit more like a pen than a brush, and in practice they seem to carry a little more water and offer more control over the water flow.

That control matters more than it sounds. Some water brushes have a button at the bottom that releases extra drops of water at the tip, and if you have applied watercolor pencil to a page, a sudden blob of water can ruin the moment. The Pentel brushes avoid that, which makes them an easy addition to any stocking for anyone who enjoys water-soluble pencils or graphite, especially for working away from home.

Slice Ceramic Knife

Color pencil artists often use hobby knives to carve fine details, such as hair, through layers of color in wildlife or portrait work. The Slice ceramic knife does the same job with one important advantage: the blade is ceramic. You can still cut paper with it if you try, so it is not indestructible, but it is far less likely to slice accidentally through the paper surface when you get a little heavy-handed.

The original motivation behind Slice products is worth knowing: the founder designed safe cutting tools so that his son, who has autism, could work more independently. As artists, the practical benefit is that the knife looks and handles much like a hobby knife, but gives crisper, cleaner lines and is noticeably easier to control.

Strathmore Toned Tan Softcover Journal

Strathmore’s Toned Tan paper is well loved by artists, and the softcover journal format shows it off beautifully. There are spiral-bound versions too, but the softcover journals have a luxurious look and feel, almost like leather even though they are not, without a luxury price. A mixed media version and a Toned Grey version exist alongside the Toned Tan.

One honest note: when a journal looks this good, some people feel intimidated about making their first mark in it. A sketch journal is not meant to be perfect, and nobody has to see what goes inside. The Toned Tan paper itself is simply beautiful to work on, and that is reason enough to keep this on the list.

Tombow Mono Eraser

Every color pencil artist should have a Tombow Mono eraser in their toolkit. Battery-operated erasers have their place, and one even appears later on this list, but the small manual Tombow Mono earns its own spot, particularly for graphite and color pencil work.

Where powered erasers tend to produce vivid, heavy lines because of the power behind them, the Tombow Mono gives you the control. You create the erasing power yourself by adjusting pressure, which is exactly what you want when you need to lift out something delicate, like a faint strand of hair in a portrait.

Caran d’Ache 15 Gouache Set

This little set is reminiscent of the watercolor pan sets you get as a child, which is part of its charm. It contains fifteen colors, with the white provided as a tube, which matters because gouache artists use white heavily for toning colors down and for mixing. Fifteen colors gives you a huge range of mixtures and values to work with.

The set also includes a paintbrush, and the brush alone is genuinely impressive for such a small, inexpensive set. The build quality is typical of the brand: the brush by itself justifies the price of the whole set. As for why gouache over watercolor, gouache delivers more vividness and works wonderfully for expressive art and bold color, and there are already plenty of excellent watercolor pan sets out there.

Derwent USB Eraser

Back to powered erasers: the Derwent USB eraser stands out mainly because of its shape. It is angled like a pen so that it rests between your forefinger and thumb and sits against the palm of your hand, which makes it one of the most comfortable erasers to hold for long sessions.

That shape also encourages more detailed erasing work, and any color pencil or graphite artist knows that erasers are not just for fixing mistakes, they are a drawing tool in their own right. In terms of erasing power it does exactly what any other USB or battery-powered eraser does, but being USB rechargeable means no constantly buying batteries: plug it in overnight and it is ready to go in the morning.

Taiyo Electric Sharpener

The Taiyo electric sharpener is very inexpensive, so it will not match the level of service you get from the really expensive electric sharpeners on the market. What it does, it does well. It runs either on batteries or plugged in, so you can take it on the go, and it works perfectly for the pencils it is designed for.

The main downside is that it struggles with thicker pencils, such as the Derwent Drawing pencils. Standard-size colored pencils are a different story: Prismacolor Premier, Caran d’Ache Pablo, and Faber-Castell Polychromos all sharpen like a dream, and the points it produces are excellent. Compared with other electric sharpeners that seem to eat away at the pencil, this one wastes surprisingly little. For the price, it is a remarkable little tool.

Buying Advice

All of these products are inexpensive, and more importantly, they will actually last and be used. If you are buying for a specific artist, match the gift to their medium: the palette, water brushes, and gouache set suit water-soluble and paint-leaning artists, while the ceramic knife, erasers, toned tan journal, and canvas wrap are strongest picks for pencil and graphite artists. The sharpener is a safe bet for almost anyone working in colored pencil, as long as their pencils are standard thickness.

Conclusion

A stocking filler can be more than filler. Each of these nine items is small, affordable, and genuinely valuable to an artist, whether you are treating someone else or adding to your own kit. Any of them will still be in use long after the holidays are over.