Inside Cover of my urban sketchbook

---

My Sketch Book

I was going to take two different sized a Hahnemühle sketchbooks with me on my France and Belgium trip. The first was a 15cm square 250gsm 100% cotton, and the other is an A6 landscape watercolour book 200gsm. Both have fine grain with the same texture on both sides of the page. I thought it would be a good opportunity to compare their cotton vs. non-cotton pages.

But as we were away for 9 days and only taking carry on, I decided to streamline my urban sketching kit down to the smaller square cotton sketchbook. I figured if I ran out of pages, they’d be art shops in Ghent or Lille where I could buy a new one — but I didn’t need it.

The square book is an odd size for me. I usually favour the landscape A6 and A5, but I thought it would be good to experiment how well the square format works for creating pleasing urban sketching layouts of people and street scenes. This Hahnemühle 100% cotton book comes with a black cover, so I like to personalise mine to give them a little bit of personality.

For the square book I’ve used some Portuguese tile-design patterned paper on the outside, and I created a trip itinerary on the inside front cover using cut-out letters from magazines.

Tags for adding Locations to my Pages

I’m still finding my style for adding titles and dates to my sketches. I usually just handwrite the information onto the page, but for this trip I decided to try something a little different.

I created a set of location tags with double-sided tape on the back, to add to each page in my sketchbook. I used a stamp-set for each of the words, and added distress ink on the edges. There’s a little bit of colour coding going on too, which feels a little overboard, but once I started, I just kept going.

But – I’d squirrelled these little location tags in an envelope inside the A6 sketchbook. The sketchbook left at home! So I settled on using handwritten titles instead. But maybe I can add a few to my square sketchbook where it makes sense, and the rest can be used as collage fodder.

---

My Sketch Kit

Fountain Pens, Ink, and Fine Liner

• Twisbi Vac700R F nib with Meerkat Grey Octopus ink
• Twisbi Vac700R mini F nib with a Walnut coloured ink that came with the pen when I bought it on Vinted
• Twisbi Eco-T EF nib with Elephant Black Octopus ink

These inks are from an Octopus Write and Draw Ink Set of 6 Basic Greys (which actually includes one black and one white).

I used my F nib with the grey ink for most of my sketching, and added some restated black lines with the EF nib. I didn’t use my walnut ink at all.

I also took my 0.05 Staedtler fine liner (black), which I used for some restating of lines, but I could have left this behind.

Tombow Dual-Tip Brush Pens

I took a collection of light, medium, and dark grey Tombow pens, along with a beige Tombow. I used these occasionally to add tonal shading. I didn’t use them an awful lot, but I would definitely have missed them if I hadn’t taken them along for the ride.

Extra Pens

I also brought along three extra pens: one metallic gold and one metallic silver (both Gelly Roll), and a white Posca Pen (0.7mm). I used the gold pen for some lettering, but didn’t use the others.

Watercolour Pencils

• My recently curated batch of stubbies which are good for final touches of colour on top of watercolour paint. But I’ve also gone out urban sketching with just these stubbies and a water brush.

I really thought I’d use these a lot more, but I only used them on a couple of sketches. I think if I’d had more opportunities to sketch I would have used these more.

Watercolour Brushes

• Water brush – used all the time
• Travel brush (size 4 and 8) – didn’t use them once

I don’t really like using the water brush because of the feel of the bristles on the page, but it’s so convenient to use. These brushes means you don’t have to worry about a water container, you can just squeeze out some water and wipe the brush clean.

Small Palette with 15 colours

This selection is based on my standard urban sketchers palette of colours, but is slightly edited because there’s less spaces available. I like this size palette for traveling because is small and compact, plus it’s not as visible as my larger palette so it’s better for incognito sketching and painting.

Colour Swatch for this travel palette

• Top Row: Potters Pink, Pyrrol Scarlet, Manganese Blue,
• 2nd Row: Neutral Tint, Buff Titanium, Quin Rose, French Ultra Marines,
• 3rd Row: Opera Pink, Burnt Sienna Light, New Gamboge, Colbalt Turquoise Light,
• Bottom Row: Indian Red, Natural Sienna, Hansa Yellow Light, Hansa Yellow Medium

---

Did I Overpack Art Supplies?

For this trip – the answer is YES!

When you weigh up the scenario of:

• kicking yourself for not bringing something along that you really want to use, vs.
• carrying around excess art materials (that don’t weigh too much and don’t take up too much space)

… the choice is simple. Pack what you think you may need, and hope for the opportunity to use it. And don’t lament if they don’t get a look-in.

Most of my sketching opportunities on this trip were quite opportunistic. I was waiting somewhere, had time on my hands, and rattled-off a quick sketch. But that was because I was on holiday with MOH and we were busy sightseeing and discovering new areas of the city, rather than sitting in a cafe and having an extended sketching session.

I think this urban sketching kit is pretty streamlined for the kind of sketching I do, and it all fits into one small art bag, except for my sketchbook. I’m going to keep experimenting with this kit and see how I want to tweak it, in anticipation of attending the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Toulouse in July.

---