My Holiday Sketching Essentials!

What with the holiday season coming on, it's time to take a look at holiday (or day trip) sketching essentials! 

Although our holiday plans are done "last minute" and sometimes we just do a staycation, I always have a basic essential sketching kit planned!I love my pastels however unless I am  travelling by car I don't tend to drag boxes of pastels with me for several reasons. Firstly, I don't like working small with pastel, so that means carting large pads of Sennelier PastelCard with me (which are bulky!) and although I love the coloured sanded surface, sweaty hands tend to make finger prints on it. Secondly, packing pastels in padded boxes also means they take up a lot of space ( I also find choosing a limited palette tricky) and it also means dragging fixative and hand wipes too. Finally, I'm not the quickest and time on holiday is of the essence. My modus operandi when not out plein air  is working from plein air sketches and reference photos, so working from holiday sketches is no problem. 

The Essentials Kit

One 16 1/2 pan watercolour paint box, (this one is a Winsor and Newton and is at least 35 years old, it was a present from my art teacher on getting in to the Glasgow School of Art and some of those pans are still from that time!). It's 7cm x 17cm (pencil length), I am thinking of changing to plastic, but I'm still dithering on that one. Colourwise I've got one green, pithalo green, turquoise, umber, yellow, ultramarine blue, crimson, red, black, white, purple, orange, pink, burnt sienna and some unidentifed shades too. I've been very tempted lately by the trendy "Daniel Smith" tubes which everybody has been using, but I'm not sure about diddling about with squishy tubes, although the trendy names for the hues like "wisteria", really sound very desirable (there are pans too, I know!) Two Faber-Castell artist pens in dark sepia (I prefer working in sepia rather than black), mini-bulldog clips for windy weather, a propelling pencil (a think pencil is a real diehard!) HB, a 2B pencil, a pencil sharpener (blades don't go down well with airlines), a putty rubber and for architecture sketches a mini ruler (not a fan of using rulers. The side of a pencil is OK too.)  I really only put down the "framework" of a building with a ruler (30secs) and then go totally wonky! Then a brush/pencil tube to pack everything in. In the past there weren't Pentel Brushpens, and I found taking brushes and a water container a pain; very off putting. Having discovered brush pens about a hundred years later than everybody else, I'm amazed; this is a medium and the only one I take. 

Sketchbooks are tricky, I have often used Canson 180's to travel. They are great because they are light, open completely flat and have a magnetic closure, however they aren't really made for massive use of watercolour, so I'm back to Boesner here. The 2B pencil, is really important, often museums won't let you use any "wet" mediums, fineliners are considered to be "wet", that's why with a 2B pencil you can work light or get a bit more depth, perfect. All of this put together to pack looks like this:- 

Travelling, light! As there is no water involved you can pop it into your hand luggage, perfect. The succulents sketch at the top of the post was done using this kit! Roll on the hols, hope you have great ones ...... Bon Voyage!