My Most Portable Sketching Setup

One of the primary objectives with my art gear that I took to Queensland was figuring out the minimum I required when painting or sketching. A significant oversight was that I forgot to pack a small sketchbook, so I had to purchase an A5 Visual Diary at the airport. I managed to find one with 110gsm Cartridge paper which I figured would be okay for pencil and pen, but maybe a bit thin for watercolour.

It was just the right size, combined with my dot chart, a water brush, and sometimes a gel pen. I actually did a lot of sketching with this. Anyone else who has tried sketching people at the beach knows that no sooner do you start the sketch than the people move away, stand up, change positions, or go home. Capturing people on the beach can be a fun challenge, but you probably only have a short time to get the basic gestures and textures.

What I found is that these sketches could capture a lot more life in the figures than a photograph. If I was careful how much water I used with the water brush, I had no problems with wrinkling the page as I was painting, so decent-weight cartridge paper is probably okay for this size sketchbook if you're just using it to collect some gestural pictures quickly.

I really appreciate the dot chart on the CD laid out like a colour wheel. On this particular dot chart, I may have overdone the number of colour dots. It's easy to mix the colours you want onto the paper as you go, and I really didn't need that many colours - going back to the 6 basic families is probably okay, possibly with one or two darks and an earth colour.

Creating the dot chart like this is both practical and very cheap and won't discourage me from experimenting. So I've already started making up a few, -CD colour wheel dot charts to start very minimal sketching kits based on a water brush and a small collection of pencils and/or pens.I have a few water brushes, but I really liked the Pentel waterbrush with the bulbous water barrel - it's easy to load with water, always has a decent flow, and the bristles are easy to clean. On the trip I also bought a cheap set of water-soluble graphite pencils in two grey shades and black, and I liked them. Perhaps I'll look out for more upmarket suppliers, like Derwent.. I also like gel pens, particularly the ones with soluble ink.I'm okay with just using the cheaper spiral-bound A5 visual diaries, as long as they have thicker pages (e.g., 120 gsm) rated for mixed media, which should mean they can take a little water media if I want colour.. My intention is to have several of these kits easily accessible everywhere so there is never an excuse not to stop and sketch - e.g., in my studio, office, car, art bag, and perhaps even in the back pocket of my camera bag.

Plenty of fun to come!

My Camera Bag Diet

I’m not obsessive about my gear, but I do like it to be safely stowed, I have been very happy with my thinktank bag I bought last year for my trip to Canada. Even though its a Mirrorless Mover 30i it has plenty of room for my bulky Pentax K20 with my big tamron zoom and a 300mm zoom sigma lens, also on the large size. However I have been slowly trimming the ancillary stuff to give plenty of room for my sketcking gear. I have the mandatory clean small towels (aka face washers). I also have two lens cleaners, an old fashion blower brush and a lens pen. There is also a polarizing filter and a case for SD cards. I am rotating the SD cards, so there is a temporary backup of photos there as well as on the two external backup drive (back at my accommodation). I also have an old HTC phone that has no sim card but it has a good gps receiver so I just need to turn it on, start My Tracks and put it back in the camera bag to get a continuous wayfile. I also have my trusty but redesigned string monopod.

Art gear wise I still carry an A5 sketchbook, and a couple of pencils and/or pens, often a water brush style pen. And of course my small Cotman sketcher box. I am now even move convinced a sketckbook is a great camera accessory (for seeing).

My “Endless Summer” Sketching Kit

I've been progressively refining the gear I take on my endless summer travels, my sketching kit is now cut back to just the essentials.

I've had a little fun posting the contents of my stuff on KIT.com. It’s very sales oriented (with big green buy me buttons under each item, and I get no commission by the way) but it is fun, a nice and clean presentation and a FREE way for me to share a little of what I find useful, and I get to tell a brief story or two of why I like/use the stuff. My advice is read the stories and look though the kit, before you hit the green buttons.

Sketching Kit Four :: Making a new drawing board

While I was in Tassy I found the blue folio containing my art gear was a bit awkward to always carry around. weight wise it was fine it just always required being held in one hand (eg I had o put it down to take a photo etc) and it was a little on the largish side anyway. So I started leaving it behind and only sketching with what was in my camera bag (which was probably fine). But leaving my better art gear unused seemed a waste, and while passing the Kathmandu Shop in Salamanca place I decide to ask what they had as a temporary backpack to carry the artgear. After being shown a few expensive unsuitables I was eventually shown the 15L pocket pack (it rolls up into it own little pocket, and is designed to take up little room or weight in your luggage but provide a suitable “day” pack if required) It looked sturdy enough and was about the right size and price, I immediately transferred all my gear, including my Derwent Inktense pencils & blocks (a new favourite). Well, except no drawing board or individual sheets of watercolour paper, which where too large to fit. Happy ending, I carried my art gear everywhere after that.

I really like the idea of a backpack, so I resolved to make a slightly smaller drawing board to fit in the pack. It was simple to make from particle board. The shape is a little tapered and rounded at the top so it is easy to slide into the pack. Unfortunately this means half sheets are too big and I will have to settle for quarter sheets of watercolour paper! The board is ample sized for A4 sheets or an A4 sketch book held down with clips or a couple of rubber bands. I have also painted one side white and the other a darker gray. I have also been recently experimenting with notan/tonal value cards, so I figured I’d add a simple 5 step gray scale tone checker. Getting the tonnes reasonably accurate with acrylic paint was a bit harder than I expected (since acrylic paints notoriously dry darker than it looks when first mixed) so a bit of trial and error was required. The greyscale is conveniently always at the on the top or right hand side of my drawing board, so it will be easy hold the board out and check tones. The final embellishment was to drill a small hole as a colour checker. By positioning the hole over an area of colour it is isolated from the surrounding colours, and tones, and easy to compare with your work on the drawing board.

I’m not certain who much use I’ll get out of these tone and colour checking tools, but they look neat and they will always be easy to access and ready to use