Some day this week I will do the cool kid things and draw out the travel art supplies but for now, this will have to do.
(here is a photo of the stuff on instagram)
I own approximately 9 million pencils. Some of this is because I cannot resisting buying a pencil on account of not having a pencil to hand. I have bought many pencils in the train station at Luxembourg, along with notebooks I didn’t actually globally need because at home I had at least 9 spare sketchbooks in assorted sizes.
So eventually I decided an every day carry sketch kit that fitted in my handbag was called for. Coincidentally, Schmincke were flogging an 8 half pan utterly adorable little kit, plus a slightly less adorable 8 half pan whisky painter’s kit. It was marginally too big so the one I carried around was the 8 half pan. In fact, you can get 12 half pans in by dint of a little force and violence. What eventually did for it is I decided one day I’d prefer to carry Sennelier paints around. Just after I had redone the art kit with the box of Senneliers, I lost my handbag on a bus in Brussels. We will not discuss the generalised pain but I hadn’t actually done any paintings with the new little paintbox. Never the less, I replaced it as soon as I could and streamlined the travel art kit on account of not having any spares of some of the things that were in it. There’s a reason I hoard stuff.
Anyway.
The current handbag travel art kit always with me etc etc etc etc consists more or less of the following:
- A tiny paint box containing 12 water colours by Sennelier. They are broadly, lemon yellow, French vermillion, some other deep scarlet, French ultramarine deep, Phtalo blue, sap green, Quinacridone gold, capum mortum, Paynes Grey, Neutral Tint and sepia. Oh, and indigo.
- Several unipin fine liners, a plastic brush in black and an extrafine brush. Typically the fineliners are 0.1 and the plastic brush but that was far too limiting. I added the 0.03 and extrafine brush as well. The EFB is a new thing. It’s got different colour paint on the outside but inside it has a heart of waterproof black.
- A Platinum preppy with a Carbon black cartridge in it. Carbon is waterproof but I tend to forget that’s in there which means I should take it out, I guess.
- 2 water brushes (I like the Pentel ones until I find one I don’t like and then I grumble about the quality)
- A swatch sheet.
- An A7 sketchbook for pencil sketches which I don’t currently use
- A tiny Hahnemuhle ZigZag for emergencies
- A mechanical pencil. I think it’s a Pentel P205 but I’m not sure because the old kit definitely had a nice limited edition one which I obviously lost and I probably just pulled from the collection. Maybe I shoudl make it a Kuratoga. Dunno.
I like seeing what other people back until they drag out Altoids boxes and the tops of Coke bottles and 20 tubes of Daniel Smith. Then I just feel inadequate. Someday there will be a post on gatekeeping art.
What you basically need is a few paints, a brush, possibly a pencil and an inkliner if you are that way included. The other 20 tones of stuff I own but don’t carry around is probably a bit superfluous to my needs.