Slow Road to Trimming My Tools: Part 1

After some travels this summer, I made this sketch note to myself:

I've been there before and was usually able to remove extra stuff within one "re-packing" session. But this time, I noticed a resistance on many levels. I had so many things in my backpack I felt a need to separate different drawing tools into different themes/bags/boxes, and then I was not sure what was it what box and what exactly I liked or used the last time? And I kept getting some glimpses about "that great tool that once was amazing," where is it? After some time, I realized that I've spent more time looking at my tools and putting them from one bag into another than actually drawing, and that is when I knew that I was in real trouble. Because now I had more bags in front of me than before, and zero willpower to make any choices about what to use in my sketch. I ended up not drawing on that day (apart from the following doodle, which I did on my iPad after I upgraded to procreate, and saw all the new brushes, which did not help with the previous situation).

So I stopped and decided to look at what people are doing, talk to friends about this, give this transformation some time but make a log of what approaches I am trying, what is working and what is not and get myself out there sketching more. And I decided to share the process as I go - because I am sure I am not the only one and because this way I will have something to refer to.

First, I asked myself what are some of my favorite tools and what kinds of marks I am after in them. So I cleaned and refilled my Ackerman Pen. Here is a page created with it right after. 

This en is not an easy character to deal with - but I remembered that when I make it work, it brings me joy. Testing out what marks I can make and what I really liked, how different holds gave me different feels, was the most useful part of this experiment.

Next I took my Pilot Parallel Pen with a modified nib (I cannot believe I never made a post about making it! - not to self: make one!). So I took this pen to an outing and drew with it almost 100% blindly. I made a sketch I enjoy looking at even right now - because I remember looking at the scene without breaking eye contact for a longer than usual time and I remember this time and scene so vividly! 

And then a friend gave me a bunch of super bright acrylic inks, and I found one more to complement the trio, and I painted over this sketch - I had so much fun, I kept bringing those inks with me to a couple of outings after this. When I asked myself why, I realized that with these inks I can mix colors only by overlapping them on the page directly, and I can paint super fast, too. There are very few choices - I have only three bottles and a big brush.  

I tried overlapping these inks with other tools and made more notes:

I think the most useful part was actually writing down what I like and then trying to use that one particular thing on the next sketch I had a chance to do. I hoped to apply this thinking to my packing for the travel  but ended up with too many art supplies (as you can guess flying with acrylic inks or a leaky fountain pen in tow is a bit involved). So I took a different approach to choosing materials for the trip - and hope to tell you more about it in the next post!

On My Table: Beginning of November 2025

First of November found me at the table, sorting through my sketches done on a trip to the East Coast of the USA. We saw some amazing fall colors, had a chance to connect with dear family members, and met a porcupine. I am going to do a set of posts about the trip, but for now, all of this stuff was dominating my table, as you can see. 

I took a very reasonable set of tools with me on purpose (way more than I used to take at some point but compared to recent trends it was very reasonable) and I missed some things on the trip, so one of the first things I did after returning is I made a list of things that I was reaching for and now finding and tried to find exactly what would be "that" - hence the swatching of all the "browns" and search for grays and greens. 

And I kind of missed the sketch that ended up as a gift (I very rarely never tear pages from my sketchbooks - but this was a special occasion. And I am very happy that it ended up being a gift to this particular family member! But since I missed it and a story that it created - I drew it from a photo that I took :)

Reading Notes: New Collection of Sketchbooks!

Just in case, if you did not know this about me,  I am a huge fan of sketchbooks :) I enjoy flipping through sketchbooks of other people when I have a chance (Sketcherfest was a great example of where one might do this for a whole day!). And I always look for books that are essentially collections of other people's sketchbooks. Be that one artist or many under one cover - they are always a waterfall of inspiration and motivation. I have quite a few in my own library - it all started with Julia Rothman's "Drawn In" and then my collection grew quite a bit. 

So when I saw that two artists whose work I follow closely (Studio Takeuma and Tom Froese) were featured on the cover of this collection, I hunted it down through the library (hurray for libraries - the fact that you can get almost any book for free is one of the things I will never stop cheering for and be amazed at! Support your libraries - if you are in the USA, the American Library Association is a great source of information on how to support them - especially during uncertain times like right now, when book bans are on the rise and library funding is being cut. 

So, the book is "Sketched Out: Artistic Sketchbooks and Journals Unveiled," and it is a collection of sketches from artists. There are some interview questions and short information too. I knew before (and admire) some of the artists in this book: Jenny Adam and Marina Grechanik. But many were new, and in these days when algorithms pollute your instagram, it became especially hard to track down new artists. I have a system to follow what people are doing (and avoid looking at the stream that is being pushed at me), but it works for people who are already in my cone of interest, and I was glad to add some names to my list. 

Here are some photos from the book (click on the image to see it large).