A Holiday Sketchbook Kit

Holidays are my favourite time to enjoy working in my sketchbook. I’m sure that the change of pace helps to the creative side of my brain to relax and explore new ideas. The ideas, images, textures and patterns captured in my sketchbook during a two-week camping trip in January can feed and inspire new artwork for the rest of the year.

So here’s what I take along for some holiday sketching:

• Sketchbooks: I love the Stillman & Birn alpha series square soft cover sketchbook. I also took a small hardcover sketchbook. Both of these are nice and compact for travelling with. I like having two sketchbooks so that while one watercolour page is drying, I can keep working in the other, and vice versa.

• A travel watercolour set. This Schmincke set has actually been filled with pans of goauche, as I prefer gouache at the moment. I take a couple of paint brushes (not four as shown in this image).

• Small scissors

• Glue stick

• Scraps of vintage paper for collage. I find that adding a few bits of this to a blank page can really help triggering ideas, or getting started.

• Pencil sharpener

• Blackwing pencil. This is such a great all rounder!

• Assorted colour pencils. We always pack colouring pencils, so I generally use those, rather than taking my favourites from home. Crayola is a very good option for the whole family, and works just fine for adding a bit of colour to my sketchbook pages.

I store all this in a flat plastic container, which also serves as a handy lap top ‘table’ if there’s no table nearby.