Gift Ideas For The Young Digital Art Enthusiast

If you have a friend or family member that’s into digital art with a birthday coming up, you might want to check out some of these gift ideas.

The main categories of gift ideas here are Hardware, Inspiring Art, and Learning. You can mix them together as you feel suits your budget and what the person needs.

Hardware:

A drawing tablet is the digital artists primary weapon, and they come in a few different forms. Pen tablets and pen displays, which need to be connected to a computer, and stand-alone devices.

Pen Tablet Or Pen Display:

Pen tablets are screenless drawing tablets that tend to be more a affordable option for someone wanting to dip their feet into digital art. For some, they take a little while to get used. Looking at your monitor while drawing on a different surface can be a challenge at first. Eventually the hand-eye coordination clicks though and drawing becomes a breeze.

Check out our pen tablet options under $100.

Pen displays differ from pen tablets in that they are essentially a second monitor for your computer that you can draw directly on to. On the larger side there are 24″ displays, on the lower, around 12″. Some find this easier to draw on because they can see the line they are making right under their hand. Wacom’s competitors have really made pen displays way more affordable and the quality gap is definitely closing.

I recommend checking out this range of XP-Pen display tablets for digital art.

Or there’s stand-alone tablets…

Stand-alone devices don’t need to be connected to a computer and are therefor a perfect option for people who like to draw on the go.

Inspiration

We draw inspiration from all sorts of places: video games, movies, comics, walks in nature, historical objects etc, and every artist needs a few books on their shelves to flip through when looking for ideas.

These are just some art book ideas to that might inspire the young digital artist on their next birthday or Christmas.

See more movie art books here.

Learning

So often we see questions about where to start with digital art, so a nice gift to include is something educational that can help get that young artist pushing pixels around right away. This could be in the form of books, video tutorials or a subscription to an online learning resource.

My first recommendation for where to learn is a Schoolism annual subscription. Around Winter they run a sale of the subscription so it makes an ideal Christmas gift for someone wanting to learn digital art. From how to tackle the fundamentals, dealing with lighting and texture, animation and even digital sculpting, I’m inclined to even recommend this above physical art school. The instructors are all experienced artists working in the industry, so quality of the courses is extremely high. If you need gift ideas for the person who already has they tools they need for making digital art but wants to learn new things, this would be a great one.

If the price tag is a little out of reach for the moment, there are other platforms like Skillshare. The cost is a little lower and you have access to a range of courses outside of art as well.

Then there are artists who have tutorials and courses up on their websites. People like Trent Kaniuga, Ahmed Aldoori or Aaron Blaise for example. So research favourite artists and see if they offer tutorials or even mentorships.

Gift Bundle Ideas

These gift bundle ideas will include a variety of things for someone interested in digital art and meet different price marks. Of course mix and match, or find similar things, to suit your wallet and the person you are gifting.

The pricing is based on being located in the US and factors in Black Friday specials, so prices might vary depending on where and when you are.

$550 mega bundle

$280 – Artist 13.3 Pro Holiday edition
$200 – Schoolism Annual Subscription
$30 – Art of Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse
$20 – Ashoka Funko Pop
$15 – Pumpkin Mage and Sprout art print

OR

$300 – Samsung Galaxy S6 Lite with S-Pen
$32 – Case and keyboard for S6 Lite
$200 – 1 Year Schoolism Subscription
$13 – Derek Laufman’s RuinWorld: Eye For an Eye graphic novel

$300

$200 – Schoolism Subscription
$30 – Art of Overwatch
$40 – XP-Pen Deco Mini 7
$20 – Mighty Mages: War of The Spar Poster – Karla Ortiz Art Print
$3 – Gator Snack sticker – Derek Laufman

$100

$40 – Deco Mini 7
$26 – The Sketchbook Of Loish: Art In Progress
$30 – Sketch Everyday: 100+ simple drawing exercises by S Grünewald
$3 – War Machine sticker – Derek Laufman

If you want to gift art prints, you might want to take a look at our new regular feature, the First Friday Five.

Well, that’s it for this post. We hope this gives you some ideas for gifting over the holiday season or even treating yourself with.

Full Disclosure: This post does contain affiliate links, so should you make any purchases through them, as an Amazon Associate, I might get a small commission. This doesn’t affect the price for you in any way, but it does help me to keep creating content here for you.