Towards Building the Perfect Sketchbook Holder

With a paint-out weekend in Castlemaine on the horizon for the Watercolour Society, it was time to build a sketchbook holder that could actually handle the job and coimg winter weather.

After two prototypes, I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for. The foam core version was light and semi-waterproof, but it quickly buckled in the middle. The framing matte offcut held up better until it got wet. The sticky side of the velcro tape also caused problems by lifting the paper surface off the matte board rather than releasing the velcro, when I tried to remove my palettes. 

I found a sheet of 5mm craft wood (MDF) that was sturdy enough to do the job but light enough to hold in one hand. A couple of coats of acrylic paint should ensure the waterproofing. Then came the fun design tweaks. I added internal slots to hold bulldog clamps to nicely hold the sketchbook open. I slightly changed the shaped to better fit A5 sketchbooks in both portrait and landscape formats. Two rows of velcro and a felt bumper to keep my larger palettes snug and secure.

The result is a holder that keeps my sketchbook and palette firmly in place with one hand free to actually paint. Back to plein air testing.

Plein Air sketching follow up

What Actually Worked (and What Didn't)

Over the past month, I’ve had a trips down to the Mornington Peninsula, Venu Bay, and I'm partway through the Plein AirPril challenge, whereby I’m supposed to do an outdoor painting every day in April. It has been a great chance to properly road-test my three DIY portable setups I'd been tinkering with.

The clear winner: the sketchbook holder

I haven’t used my tripod easel at all, but I’ve used the sketchbook holder constantly. It securely holds both my A5 sketchbooks, one with a hardcover sewn-spine, the other a wire-coil visual diary style. You slide the book covers behind the holder, fold the pages forward, through the slot and spread the pages to where you want and clip them with large bulldog paper clips on either side, and you're done. Even in the wind, it stays put. It's light enough to hold one-handed while standing, or it just rests across my knees when I'm sitting.

The whole setup takes almost no time: a pencil, a pen, a water brush, and my homemade CD dot card palettes. Done. It pays to be agile when the fickle Melbourne weather decides to throw storms, rain, wind gusts, but is mostly grey and overcast with occasional surprise sunshine at me all in the same afternoon.

The watercolour sketchboard: promising but …

I only pulled this one out a couple of times. It works, but it's heavier, slower to set up, and critically, the prototype was made of matte board. Getting drenched a few times took a real toll on it. The bulldog clip slots are a clever idea, and worth keeping in any future version

Lessons learned the hard way

Bag organisation matters more than you think. Rummaging around for that specific brush or pen mid-session is genuinely annoying. I've since started bundling brushes and pens in cord concealer spiral tubing and keeping them in small ziplock bags. Bonus is less disruption searching,

Using Velcro was trickier than it looks. Its holding capacity between its hock and loop surfaces is powerful. So powerful when I taped it to plastic palettes, the sticky backing kept pulling off surfaces as I removed the palettes. It was also lifting the paper surface off the matte board, strong double-sided tape and hot glue didn't work well either; PVC glue was slightly better. Still experimenting, looking for a heavy-duty version of this tape.

Keep your water brushes topped up. I nearly ran out of water mid-sketch one day. Lesson learned: empty, clean, and refill water brushes before heading out.

The spray bottle is actually pretty mandatory as well because it lets you keep whatever form of watercolour palette you’re using moist and the paint easier to pick up, especially with a water brush.

What's next

I'm planning to rebuild the sketchbookholder in plywood, with slots at the side to hold the sketchbook pages and a slightly bigger top flap for my larger palettes. For larger work or when using larger watercolour pads or blocks, I'll stick with my existing drawing board (the one with the tripod mount) with a camera tripod for a proper travel easel setup.

Overall?  Happy with how it went. Sometimes the simplest, lightest setup really is the best one.

Experimenting with Plein Air Easels and Sketchboards

I'm not entirely sure what to call these things: plein air easels, sketchboards, drawing boards? 

Whatever the right term is, I'm on the hunt for a minimal, easy-to-deploy setup for sketching and painting outdoors. The important restriction is that everything has to fit in my red art bag alongside all my other tools. So I've got three prototypes to test on my next trip.

Option one is a simple drawing board I cut down to fit the bag. I've added a quarter-inch T-nut so it can mount on a tripod, which gives it a bit more stability to the bag. It's just a flat sheet of plywood, 33 by 24.5 cm (about 13" x 9¾"). Nothing fancy, but solid.

Option two I'm calling a sketchbook holder. It's a prototype cut from matte board, 34 by 16.5 cm (roughly 13½" x 6½"). The clever bit is a slot cut into it where your sketchbook spine slots in. The back cover sits behind the board while the pages open out in front, held firmly in place with a couple of bulldog clips. The exposed board at the top gives you space for your sketching and painting media. There are plenty of DIY versions of this out there and I've been particularly inspired by Sarah Burn's design experiments. Commercial versions like those in the Etcher series are also worth a look. For my prototype, I'm using Velcro, though a lot of people prefer magnets.

Option three is a watercolour sketchboard, a bit bigger so it can handle larger sheets like an Arches block or similar pads. It's square at 29 cm (11"), mostly because I had a square piece of matte board handy. It loosely follows Doug's Sketching School design. The extra space means there are two configuration options: one end suits a bigger layout with a full size palette and room for a water container, while the other works better for larger pads but has less room for a palette and no space for water.

All three are light and fit neatly in the bag, so I'll take them all out and put each through its paces. With some creative use of clips, they can all handle pretty much the same tasks. Tripod mounting and a water bowl are the exception for now, but maybe I'll sort that out later.