Ooo! A teen who loves art!!! And being able to get to them before "adulthood" and conforming and being bland and dull and colorless has set in. I love threads like this!
This is an exciting time for her. You are a great mom for encouraging her.
So I would like to get her some nice art supplies for Christmas-- she is still using Crayola and a #2 pencil.
Don't give up on the Crayola crayons just yet! There is a fantastic book by an artist which recommends using (only) Crayola crayons for coloring as they have the best pigments in crayons. She teaches some more advanced techniques on how to layer colors to achieve more realistic depth with CRAYONS using colored pencil techniques. She recommends getting the 120 set of Crayolas as that will give plenty of colors & neighboring colors on the color wheel to learn how to blend colors to do shadows and highlights. This
technique will carry over, whether she uses colored pencils, pastels, paints, or draws. She also teaches how to use the crayons in a variety of ways, like burnishing, for different effects. And she suggests what kind of paper to get for the different effects.
Amazing Crayon Drawing With Lee Hammond: Create Lifelike Portraits, Pets, Landscapes and More:
http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Crayo.../ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
A wonderful step up from regular crayons is
watercolor crayons. She colors with them just as she would a regular Crayola wax crayon. But, then she adds a little bit of water to where she colored, and then it turns into watercolor
paint, where she can now use a wet Q-tip or synthetic paintbrush to blend the colors or layer on more colors. She can also wet the watercolor crayon directly or swipe the wet paintbrush over the tip of the crayon and apply color that way. My favorite brand of watercolor crayons is Caran D'ache Neocolor
II (<-- Make sure there is a II or 2 at the end of the Neocolor. The plain Neocolor is NOT the watercolor kind. The Neocolor
II are called "pastels" but they color like crayons, as I've said. You can get a set of 10 at
Amazon. (But try to find them at Michaels or AC Moore with the 40% off coupons.)
http://www.amazon.com/Caran-dAche-Classic-Neocolor-Water-Soluble/dp/B000YIMXMG/ref=sr_1_14?s=arts-crafts&ie=UTF8&qid=1448894750&sr=1-14&keywords=caran+d'ache
Demo of the Caran D'ache Neocolor
II watercolor pastels:
I agree with everyone else on getting Prismacolor or Faber Castell colored pencils. You can buy them
individually, by color, or in small sets. This way, you can mix and match several of them and she can decide which ones she prefers.
Get a blending stump too. And a white kneaded eraser and a high quality
metal pencil sharpener. Cheap plastic sharpeners break the colors inside the pencils.
There are Youtube videos she can watch on how to blend the colored pencils with baby oil or the blending stump. There are also LOTS of drawing lessons & demos on Youtube. Have watch quite a few before she settles on any one artist or technique to follow.
There are also watercolor pencils or markers. Just add water for watercolor effects. She uses a refillable water BRUSH to adding water and blending:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/76631631131253728/
DO get her good paper to draw or color on. I cannot stress this enough, the difference between someone staying enthusiastic or giving up and thinking that they are only mediocre and never able to achieve the affects that "real artists" achieve no matter how long or how much they try is OFTEN due to having the wrong/bad materials to work with, and not the skill of the artist. Yet they don't know, especially as children or teens, what the problem is. They think it's THEM. That they lack real talent after all. So the give up.
You can give her all the great colored pencils & watercolor pastels, but the pencils fail on bad quality paper. (It's the same for having great paints but having bad or the wrong type of paintbrushes for the desired effects.)
I would suggest a Strathmore MIXED MEDIA pad or journal book as then she can
also use the paper for WET media, like watercolors, watercolor crayons or pencils, colored markers or even acrylic paints later. It's much hardier and take a lot of layers & abuse. Drawing paper will tend to buckle when anything wet is applied to it. But, find one with a decent tooth (texture) so she can get textural effects while drawing or coloring.
If DD wants to branch out into colored markers, have her check out Alisa Burke's blog. She is the queen on the various products to use and she can actually see the effects achieved with each type of products does
before she (has you) get them. She uses everything from professional grade to cheap Crayola washable markers and will list what she worked with.
http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/search?q=markers
For colored pencil blending:
http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/2015/06/colored-pencils-few-tips-and-tricks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+Alisaburke+(alisaburke)
If DD wants to branch out and experiment with mixed media, painting or printmaking, Traci Baustisa has a blog & several videos on her very fun & spontaneous process.
http://kollaj.typepad.com/kollaj/2015/06/25-ideas-printmaking-ideas-for-handmade-found-tools.html
She has a FREE online workshop still up of about 6 videos for Printmaking up at the Strathmore Artists Workshops website. It's only up till the end of the year. Register to see the workshop videos. Then go out and have fun searching for supplies around the house to use to do the printmaking. I took her previous workshop a couple years ago, and it was sooo much fun.
Register for free here:
http://www.strathmoreartist.com/artist-studio/
But all the workshops gets taken down Dec 31st.
Here is a preview of what is in Traci's FREE Strathmore workshop:
IF DD wants to try painting, I'd recommend she do Flora Bowley's INTUITIVE Painting technique
before she goes and gets "traditional" instruction. Most people end up taking Flora's technique to get BACK to being spontaneous and UN-doing a lot of the stiff, strict rules that get taught in art classes.
Flora teaches an online 6(?) week workshop several times a year, where all the students spend the majority of the time bonding & supporting each other online and creating a really tight "tribe" as they grow, learn & blossom, which is Flora's goal.
Here is a preview of her technique. I just love watching how freely she paints. Notice: she uses cheapo foam brushes from Walmart. And she still
finger paints!
(Since your DD has an aptitude for drawing, her paintings may end up even more elaborate, rather than just doodles.
)
For great, yet inexpensive paintbrushes, my favorites are the Loew Cornell, synthetic, amber brown bristle, flat or round paintbrushes. (Assorted sizes, but a #6, #8 or #10 flat will work for most everything.) You can get them at Michaels. They work well without going limp when wet. They have a nice snap or spring to the bristles in coming back to a nice point, after being pressed down on the paper, flattening out the bristles and then letting up on the pressure. That makes them so great for most techniques, especially scrubbing in colors or softly blending layers of adjoining colors together.
Oh, and to get the latest Michaels coupons, you don't need to sign up for their emails, just go to
http://www.retailmenot.com/view/michaels.com
DickBlick has a Cyber Monday deal today! I know where I am shopping later when I get home!
http://www.retailmenot.com/view/dickblick.com
And last, print this out for her and paste it up on the wall. This is my FAVORITE quote because it's so true for beginner artists. We ALL have gone through this, and we really do wish someone had told us this sooner. Too many people who COULD be good artists (not necessarily professionals,) give up because they weren't told this. It's by Ira Glass:
and the workers at our Michael's and AC Moore are less than helpful. I will for the brands you all have recommended. 
