Travel Sketching: a quest for the right amount of tools

I was excited about the East Coast trip and potential fall colors and started thinking about how to approach the selection of the tools way before it was time to pack. There are different approaches I've employed before - no restriction (lol!), limiting my tools to one kind of material. Or limit by weight. Or think about what colors would prevail in potential sketching situations and see if I can crystalize a collection of tools around that. Only the last idea seemed reasonable but I did not want to jinx my fall color chances (and the predictability of the colorful season on the East Coast is very iffy). 

So - my first attempts are below - they were created based on the "what if I was just going to paint outside today" kind of thinking. Needless to say, they were way more than I would have used on this trip, way more than it was reasonable to carry with me across the country and in potential sketching situations!

The left one had more pens and bigger selection of brushes and more markers too. The middle one one had mostly water brushes but a lot of color pencils and gouaches of all sorts (from my palette to a jar of white to some tubes). Both were well over 1 lbs... Then I put together a lovely little selection of pencils (rightmost image) and thought that I might just stick to this - but very quickly it grew into another more-than-a-pound bag!

So - I decided to make some rules and then do my best to stick to them.

1. My general rule is that no matter what I should take with me my favorite materials - they change from time to time but I do not remember ever traveling without a pentel pocket brush with black ink a uniball pen (gray body) and a ballpoint. Between these and a finger/smudging, I can cover all the basics :) 

2. My next rule is to bring at least some version of material that is exciting me most at this particular moment. In this case, it was my acrylic markers - I picked two colors.

3. I knew that I would need some tape and glue and pencil sharpener. And a paper towel. And various sketchbooks (I took three with me - one main one to collect everything at the end of the day, one pocket and one with the lovely smooth paper that it joy to work on (thank you N. for this gift!) - see photo below. 

4. Next - I decided that I would think about when I might have a chance to draw and come up with a set that should cover both indoor and outdoor options but with the idea that I should be able to complete a sketch from the "I think I have a chance to sketch" thought to the moment when I am closing the book and running after my companions in under 5 min with the idea that it can be 2. So it would have to be something small, workable while standing and in the rain, and easy to pull out of my pocket. With that in mind, I made several options (and quickly tested them on the page below). But with options to expand if I pull everything out for a luxurious chance to spend an evening and use everything.  Altogether this meant that each tool should be able to do multiple jobs (hence some color pencils are watercolor pencils and some are not for example. And simultaneously they should be different enough to be able to cover a wide range of colors, textures, and values. But with the 5 min for a sketch limitation.

As you can see, I decided that jinxing or not but I am bringing my yellow with me :) 

Here is what I ended up with. You can click on the image to see the names of the pencils (there is a close-up below too). And my watercolor+gouache palette is something I will have to go back and research more - it was pulled together at the last minute when I suddenly found my art tool palette I thought I lost it a few months ago!). 

One of the large acrylic markers contains my own custom-mixed light blue color. And the second one has pigment info printed on it - cad yellow deep hue. I took 10 pencils (one has 2 colors :) And two crayons that deserve a separate post about them - this is a new tool for me and it is a tricky one but really interesting! Zig calligraphy markers to allow me to travel without my pilot parallel pens (I did miss them but Zigs were enough in this case). 

And I used all of these! Some more than others but this was a relatively small kit that served me well! And I came up with some cool combinations and sequences for using these tools together. 

Current main sketchbook (number 157) is 8x10 gamma from Stillman&Birn - covered in all sorts of stickers :) Large white one is a midori notebook cotton - takes some wash but mainly such a joy to write and draw in and somehow very liberating! And the top one is royal talens art creations in the smallest size. Fits in my pocket and deserved a medal for surviving all sorts of weather on this trip!