My tiny travel kit

I have been doing a number of studies and experiments in my sketchbook which I may add at some stage, but for now, here's a sketch of one of my tiny travel kits. I have a little palette, a pencil, a water-brush, a travel brush and a kneadable eraser with me all the time. I then take a pocket notebook or watercolour sketchbook and I'm set for anything I may come across while I am out and about.

My very portable watercolour travel kit, painted in a Stillman & Birn Alpha landscape sketchbook.

Next up is a study of my full plein air kit. I also use this for my teaching and there is quite a bit in it so it will take more doing! 

(See it all here!)

July 2014 update

Here is the case I use, from Moleskine. The small multi-purpose hard shell.

Another trip to Cockatoo Island - just for fun

Liz and I spent a great day at Cockatoo Island, something we've talked about doing for a while since it seems to be a favourite place for both of us.

Liz sketches very fast and my challenge was to try to be much faster and freer so I wasn't holding her up too much. While she still did two or three sketches to my one, I also worked on A4 Moleskine this time rather than my usual A5 so I had a bit more splash room. A great day. She tells it pretty well...here.

We started at the old electrical boxes, as the weather was looking threatening and these were something I'd seen a number of studies of at the Urban Sketchers workshop and wanted to tackle without getting too fiddly....

Old electrical boxes at Cockatoo Island

The we went to the convict area. Last time I went to this part of the island it was stinking hot so this was a good day to paint this lovely wall.

A wonderful sandstone wall at Cockatoo Island

And after a well earned lunch with some compulsory paint and pigment chat, we went to draw the crane. It started to rain so we took shelter in one of the tunnels. Liz did three paintings while I did this one but I have still managed to be a bit looser than usual.

One of the many rusting cranes at Cockatoo Island

A great day with a good friend!

Cockatoo Island Sketching

I went back to Cockatoo Island on Saturday to meet the Urban Sketchers after their two day workshop, and did a bit more sketching. I have no idea what these various machines do but they are so interesting to draw. I'll add the ones from January again as well as Saturday's March visit. All done in Moleskine watercolour notebooks, A5 size, with watercolour and some pen.

A rusted structure near the ferry. I love those granulating colours!

This was painted on Saturday. The sky behind us was very threatening but looking towards the bridge was fine.

An abandoned machine in one of the large warehouses.

This was painted on my first trip to the island in January. I love the minimal colour scheme of this view from inside the large warehouse.

Another machine of unknown purpose...

This machine is located out in the open near a bar. I painted this on Saturday and really enjoyed dripping in the rust colour.

The colours on the walls are amazing.

This was painted in January once again in the main warehouse. It was very hot that day so I painted inside. This is a wall with some ladder sections attached.

Another wall in one of the large warehouses.

Painted in January, this is typical of the many buildings that have seen many uses. Doors and windows are often closed in, covered up, repainted or changed in other ways.

I'll keep going back to this interesting place. I am doing some abstract oil paintings of some of the amazing locations.

Black Sketch Books 1 - Moleskine Watercolour Notebooks.

I have a large number of black books that I have used over the last 30 years as sketch books, visual diaries, note books, study notes and so on. I have some other books that are not black - beautiful leather bound books and so on - but I'll concentrate on the black books for now! This first post is on the Moleskine Watercolour Notebooks. Future posts will cover Stillman & Birn, Handbook, Canson and others I have tried over the years.

My collection of black books jumbled onto one shelf. 

Moleskine watercolour sketchbooks. Pocket
on left. The others are 5 of the 'large' and two of the 'folio'.

Moleskine Watercolour Notebooks 

Of all the sketchbooks I have tried, my favourite for painting are the Moleskine Watercolour Notebooks. These are made with 200gsm cold-pressed white watercolour paper that is designed to be the same surface on both sides. It is also thick enough to take paint on both sides and takes watercolour washes well. Being cold pressed it is not completely smooth but is also nice to use for pen and ink and pencil drawing.

 The Moleskine watercolour notebooks come in landscape format in Pocket (A6), Large (A5), Folio Album (A4) and a larger Folio Album (A3). You can see them all here. They all have an elastic closure, which is helpful if the book is rattling around in a bag, and a pocket for extra papers or notes in the back, features that have been copied extensively in recent years. I have had a pocket version, on the left of the picture, since 2006, and it is a lovely little watercolour book but I prefer to carry a the larger A5 book with me these days, along with a Stillman & Birn Alpha Pocket notebook, which I'll show you in part 2.

The Large Moleskine Watercolour Notebook from the Moleskine.com website.

I really like the landscape format of these books. For plein air sketching it allows you to do a very wide view across the page if you wish, or turn the book vertically for an alternate view. The images below are all from an A5 'large watercolour sketchbook' as pictured above, which is 81/4' x 5" or 21cm x 13cm. You can see many more of my sketches on my website here. A great size for plein air and my absolute favourite sketch book.

Large watercolour sketchbook used horizontally. 

Large watercolour sketchbook used vertically

Large watercolour sketchbook with image extended partially across the page.

I am up to my 4th Large Notebook for plein air sketching, but have two others that I use for documentation. One I have called 'Every Watercolour', which has a painted swatch of every watercolour I have tried. They are arranged by colour type, lemon yellows together, deep blues etc, with details of colour name, brand and pigments used. Here is one of the cool blues pages. They are painted quite close together to waste as little space as possible but are also done with plenty of water at the top to show the full tonal range and characteristics of each colour.

'Every Watercolour' sketchbook - one of the cool blues pages.

My other Large Watercolour Notebook has a whole range of mixing experiments and triad work. It is very helpful to keep these in one well organised spot rather than to do them on a rough piece of paper and throw them away. They can then be referred to later and are very useful for my teaching. Here are a couple of sample pages.

A mixing wheel with Transparent Red Oxide mixed with some warm and cool yellows, blues and reds

A colour wheel using opaque earth colours. On the right are other compatible colours.

My A4 Folio Album books are also for my own reference notes. One contains a paint-out and research information, mixing experiments and pigment history of every Daniel Smith watercolour. Below is my page on Ultramarine.

Ultramarine, page from my Moleskine Watercolour Folio on Daniel Smith watercolours. In the left margin are other Ultramarine paints by other manufacturers for comparison.

Coming up next - Stillman & Birn.