minimalist kit for sketching and painting

Sketching and painting out and about is a wonderful thing.  But sometimes it can be a bit tricky especially when there is so much stuff to lug around.  That's where a minimalist kit comes in handy.

If you have one already, I would love to see yours.

I tried a pencil and a5 notebook, but I'm not comfortable with pencils yet, so I put together this little kit for watercolours on the go.



Total size is about 7"x9" and once packed, it weighs about a pound (including the pins I keep adding to it)

Inside lives TREASURE!



- swatch card for the new paints I'm trying in this kit
- dot card "mixing six" by Beam Paints
- pencil
- clip in case I use a notebook
- hair stick because long hair is anoying
- slightly dirty paper towel that isn't dirty enough to toss away so I stuffed it in this bag for painting
- fold up water container
- limited palette watercolour paints
- a rag that fits perfectly in my paint tin
- four collapsible brushes
- and at the moment I have a cold press watercolour block... and I thought I had an a6 notebook, but it's missing I guess.  
- oh, and a paperclip of course!

Here it is a bit more spread out



And one more thing.

Inside the acorn on the zipper lives a tiny bit of kneaded eraser.



all I need is water and courage.  

One of the things I want to improve with this kit is water.

I'm careful with the pigments I use, but I would rather not dump paint water in the wild.  It would be better to take the water home and put it in with my compost where it can dissipate in healthy soil that is used to that kind of thing.  

It's been difficult finding something small enough to fit in the bag that won't make everything soggy.  

Three different plein air watercolour setups.  Small, tiny, and very tiny palettes.   Pretty cool, but I don't think the last one is for me.

All you need to draw with is a marker of some kind and something to mark on (sketching is much more portable - pencil and paper and you're set! I love what you've managed to fit in a tiny pouch for painting with though, well done!
I used to like sketching with a fine liner and then doing a wash with soluble pencils at home to add colour.

I love the late 18th and early 19th century idea of sketching with watercolour on location, then using this for studio reference.   Even after oil paint tubes helped bring oil painting outside, we still see some of the watercolour preliminary sketches of van gogh and Emily Carr (and probably others, but the local library is pretty focused on those two so that's all I've seen).  Although both of them did amazing ink sketching too.

Once the camera takes hold, thinks seem to change dramatically in the way most western artists approach art.  Watercolour on location becomes a goal rather than a means to an end.  

Anyway, my goals are partly different.

I want to get good at thumbnail sketches.   I want to practice drawing and shading different items so it's easier to draw on those expierence later.  And build up my courage of painting in a public space.

To remove some of the emotional friction, I'm trying a smaller set up.



The notebook part is just over 2 inch square.  A water brush to make set up and take down faster.  It seems like 5 or 10 min is what I normally get and is too short a time for me to set up a water bowl.  It's also a good size to think of them as thumbnails rather than sketchbook.

The drawback is the paper quality sucks.  Have to find a work around for that.

Maybe making my own mini book is the path forward.  This looks so easy.  But time consuming.

I do have a lot of lovely watercolour paper and it doesn't last forever.

my small kit has been taken apart, but one thing i always carried was watercolor postcard block- the size is perfect, if you make something fabulous it fits nicely in a small frame, and otherwise it fits well in my little sketchbooks (when i don't carry the postcards, I have a hardbound sketchbook the same size).

I've been experimenting with tiny painting to see if it's for me.  I'm not sure it is.

These note books are usually 2 inches square, with ink and watercolour.



Here's the set up I'm playing with.



It would be truely pocket size if not needing a pencil, pen, and waterbrush.

This would be awesome for practicing composition and values.  The thing I like least is having to wait for the painting to dry before closing the book and putting everything back in my pencil case. That's often 40 min or longer.

One thing I'm struggling with is the wait time between finishing painting and packing up.

The painting takes 10 to 20 min before I can close the sketchbook.   The paint palette too can get quite wet and make things messy in the bag.  I can waste paint by wiping away the wet stuff, or wait 20 to 30 min for it to dry.

A 10 min painting session is darn near half an hour.  

I feel like I'm missing some useful bit of information to making watercolour painting on the go fast and simple.

Of course, if one wants to go really small



Oil painting pochade box from an altoid tin

The tiny one I made was watercolor, but I don't see why it couldn't be done with oils, too.

I am going on a camping trip i am remarkably unenthusiastic about, so have decided to reframe it as a "plein air painting and sketching trip".

Here's my little kit. I'd love to replace the ziploc at some point,  but it does need to be waterproof....

A few loose cut up sheets of inexpensive cellulose watecolour paper, a little sketch book i have been working on with pencil, an old pencil, an eraser, a water brush pen, and 5 pigments in an old tin. I tried to choose my least toxic and most versatile pigments. French ultramarine (pb23),  prussian blue, (pb27),carmine(pr 170:1), English red (PR101),  and a nickel azo yellow (py151). Ideally i'd have a non nickel yellow, but the pigments i have dont play as well as others.  The nice thing about a brush pen is you create WAY less waste water.

I am wishing i'd splurged on the surprisingly affordable mini watercolour sketchbook i saw when I was in an art store and told myself i didnt need!

Gosh, that looks like a great kit.  

Hope the camping goes smoothly