What I Packed For A Trip (Underwater Sketching Kit)

I already shared what I used for my surface sketching on a recent trip, and this is a story of what I took with me to sketch underwater. 

Now, normally, I would start with a photo of my setup with some written comments. However, this time the sea took somewhat more of my tools than usual, so I cannot show you all of them - but I have older photos and some stories as to how this happened, and, hopefully, how to prevent this from happening in the future are at the end of this post. 

So here is what is in my basic kit for sketching underwater:

A. support board (8.5" x 6", thickness 1/16" , made out larger of Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) board, available at any construction or plastic store) 

B. water-resistant paper (this time I used GAK stone paper notebook cut to the size of my board)

C. binder clip to hold A to B

D. elastic band to make sure that pages are not "flying" (the movement of water when you are scuba diving is quite like a wind since you are in constant motion, not to mention that oftentimes you will have a current, which means a strong wind).

E. Pencil with a lanyard so that it can be attached either to my hand or to the board.

I have a variety of pencils - from a regular drawing pencil to which a nylon string was attached with superglue, to several chisel or flat pencils (to vary my line), to some pencils that were marketed as specifically created for scuba diving - you can see them all below. My favorite ones are listed in this post: https://blog.apple-pine.com/2025/01/underwater-sketching-kit.html.

And I also take some colored pencils with me often. Having multiple colors in one tool is a big win, as everything that I take with me underwater needs to be attached to my body, and having too many things is not realistic to manage. So I use double-sided red and blue pencils or multi-color (aka rainbow) pencils and stick them in my wrist band (which I made out of a wide elastic band myself).

During this trip, I also took oil pastels with me. Since this was effectively a test run for this setup, I took pastels from as many manufacturers as I could find in my studio and used a little plastic bag with a lanyard to carry them. Every time I wanted to use one of these colors, I would open the bag, get one color out, and close the bag. Fortunately, pastels themselves are negatively buoyant, which means that they would not shoot to the surface the moment I opened my little bag.

Here is an image of my tools and how my set-up looked like:

Oil Pastel Manufacturers I used were:
Faber-Castell Grip Oil Pastels
Mungyo Gallery Artists' Soft Oil Pastels
Sennelier Oil Pastels
Caran d’Ache Neoart 6901 Wax Oil Pastels

(I took only one of each with me underwater to start). 

Naturally, the most expensive one (Sennelier) I lost right away, so I cannot say how well it would work.

Out of the remaining three brands, the Faber-Castell Grip Oil Pastels were the ones most affected by the pressure at the depth - they lost more of their ability for smooth application and did not give out color willingly, mostly creating uneven coverage, which felt like catching on the surface. 

Mungyo Gallery was amazingly malleable and retained its quality of drawing both when used at the edge to make a line and at the side to cover a large surface. But they also shed quite a bit of pigment onto other pastel sticks. And the highest level of control, clearness of line, and texture of application on a side were achieved with Caran d’Ache Neoart 6901 Wax Oil Pastels.

And here are some notes on what I lost and learned from this trip:

First, I lost my binder clip, which connected my board and paper pad. Then I found it, but then I lost it again. This is a moment to remember that two is one and one is none - I should have two clips.

Then I lost my support board. It was positively buoyant and shot to the surface when I spent too much time looking at a tiny cleaning shrimp that was sitting inside a beautiful sea anemone. I was trying to move as little as possible to get closer to the creature, and accidentally let go of my drawing setup and caught only the paper pad when it started floating away. I also lost a few pencils - some fell apart due to salt and pressure exposure (not much to do with this 0 just bring more spares), and one I took with me to a dusk dive and put it away in my pouch when it got dark, but it was not there when I surfaced. You will see that some of my materials have hairbands on a string, and I carried them on my wrist. However, hairbands become really tight at the depth, and while they work great to attach things to things like my webbing or clip, they are not suitable for my wrist - my hand-made pencil holder made out of a wide elastic band is still the best - but it is coming apart, and I should make a new one for the next trip. Carrying pastels in one would not be possible, as they get quite soft and would be hard to push in, and might lose a lot of their body. The current plastic baggie is a workable solution, but it takes some time to rummage through to get the right color out. 

 

Actual sketches (with some comments on the materials) are coming soon - I made over 50 pages of sketches underwater and sorting through them proved to be a bit of herculean task :)

Here is a link to my previous post on this subject - from a previous scuba diving trip:

https://blog.apple-pine.com/2025/01/underwater-sketching-kit.html