Watercolour Sketchbook Essentials
A quick portrait of my recommended tools for keeping a Watercolour Sketchbook Journal . Can you tell I love them?
Having all your stuff organized and ready to walk out the door on a sketching safari I think is half the battle. Ready to rumble. I’d recommend finding a cross body bag it all fits in. It’ll make it easier when you travel. Even if you’re just traveling to the local park. These and a small water bottle and you’ll be set to sketch just about anywhere. There are a few other goodies I like to have along. I’ll break it all down for you.
Must haves:
a good quality sketchbook. One with a hardcover makes it easier. It protects your sketches, and you don’t always have someplace to lay your book down to paint. I like holding mine while I work. The one I drew here is a moleskin style, a bit bigger and with decent watercolour paper. I love these little square ones too. They’re niice and compact. As you can see from my entire blog I like the square format in general lol. I’ll put links to these and my fave travel palette below.
a mechanical pencil, hb or 2h. Maybe a 2b if that’s your jam. Anything softer will have graphite floating in your watercolour washes. Mechanical is good for even light lines. I like them almost invisible. And no need to sharpen
a good quality soft white eraser. Most others will damage watercolour paper.
a few waterproof pens. Make sure they’re not water soluble or they’ll also be floating in your watercolour. I have a red one and a couple of metallics in my bigger plein air kit. They’re fun to play with.
a few favourite brushes. I’ve painted my way through whole travel sketchbooks with nothing but a number 14 round. Good for washes and the fine point is ok for detail, but its nice to have a few extras onboard. They don’t take up much space.
a rag to blot excess water and lift paint off in spots. Something old and ratty is perfect.
a compact watercolour palette, I like these little Cotman Field ones by Windsor & Newton. But there are so many options out there. You can use anything.
I like mine to have the following::
a warm and a cool each of red, yellow and blue
three earth tones. I like burnt sienna, burn umber and yellow ochre. Each leans a little to red, yellow or blue. Super handy when we talk about colour theory.
and maybe a couple of these
greens; yes you can mix blue and yellow, but these will take you further. One that leans turquoise for capturing the sea, and a leaf green to push around and make a million shades of foliage with.
Paynes grey or some other dark shadowy colour.
and none of these:
black.; not a good addition to the party. Makes everything die. watercolour should be luminous. You can mix good near blacks with these other colours that have a lot more life to them
white; you’ll notice my white pan in the sketch above is untouched as the other colours are getting ground down to nothing. White watercolour paint makes everything chalky. Better to just leave the paper white. I know, easier said than done. You can also bring a little tube of gauche if you just can’t live without painting in some highlights after the fact, but white watercolour doesn’t do the job well. It just makes everything look cloudy.
That’s the compact version. Keep it all packed in a go bag by the door and your odds of actually painting in the wild will increase radically. And for travel? The smaller the better, so keep it lean. I may squeeze in a tiny spray bottle, a little packet of salt, and a wax crayon so I can scribble a little resist onto the paper, but that’s about it.
Oh, and my lunch. Or I paint somewhere with table service. A hungry painter is a grumpy painter, and nobody needs that. .
Here are the links to that paint palette and the square journals I love. Just click on the image to head to Amazon:
Let me know if this helped or inspired you, or if you’re already out there painting from life. I’d love to see what you do. For me it’s just the best; totally absorbed in the scene in front of you. It sharpens your senses and makes you see things more deeply. I look through my old travel journals and everything about the places I visited comes rushing back to me; the smells, the sounds, the memories of people stopping by to look, comment, chat. That’s a fun part of it. I’m interested to see if I get that same rush sketching with my iPad. I’m taking my cross body go bag stuffed with all these goodies just in case it doesn’t ;-)
Happy sketching out there.
Thanks so much for reading, and don’t forget to sign up for updates to follow along on the adventure!