The Joy of Sketch Kits
Hi everyone! I’m Beth, and this is my first Fun-a-day. But I’ve been carrying mixed-media sketch kits around for a while, and my project is to spend a week exploring each of four different ink and/or watercolor kits. I love peeking into other people’s art supply stashes, so perhaps you would all like a look at mine:
1. Full color sketch kit
This is my regular kit. It’s a Winsor & Newton Sketchers’ Pocket Box, but with my own favorite paints replacing the ones it originally came with. They are, from left to right:
Top row: quinacridone rose, cadmium red, azo yellow, cadmium yellow, quinacridone gold, burnt sienna.
Bottom row: phthalocyanine blue, burnt umber, a green I mixed from phthalocyanine blue and azo yellow, winsor violet, french ultramarine blue, and indigo.
This kit allows total freedom with colors: anything I see, I can paint. Sometimes I draw a picture in pencil or black ink and then fill it in with a small pointed water brush (where the water lives inside the brush, like ink lives in a pen.) Other times I use a big sable brush to get really drippy with my paint.
2. Two color sketch kit
This one is unusual but fun. I carry a tiny compact that just has two paints in it: burnt sienna, which is an orangey brown, and indigo, which is a very dark blue. The two colors are opposite each other on the color wheel, so when you mix them together you get a perfect neutral gray. I can render surprisingly realistic scenes with these colors: the indigo is great for shadows if you use it in its most concentrated form, or for the sky of a landscape if you water it down. Burnt sienna can do the brown of tree trunks and winter shrubs.
This kit is excellent for painting snowy landscapes. It works well for people, too, since the burnt sienna can do almost any skin tone, including very light ones if you water it down enough. The biggest downside is that you can’t do anything green, so flowers and leaves don’t look as realistic.
3. Three color sketch kit
I always wondered what would happen if I added a color to my two-color kit. I found the perfect addition: yellow ochre. Now I have a reddish color, a yellow, and a blue. They work beautifully together to make pictures in a muted palette. I used an old eyeshadow compact to hold the paints.
4. Walnut ink
This one is a bit different–it’s just one color of ink. I made this walnut ink from black walnut fruits that grew in my neighborhood. You know those green tennis ball looking things that appear on the ground in fall, and if you step on them they ooze black inside? If you pick them up while they’re still kind of fresh, you can boil them with steel wool (to add iron) and make an ink that goes on brown but turns blackish-gray as it ages. I carry some of it, diluted, in a water brush and use it like paint, plus I carry a bottle of full strength ink and an old-fashioned pen that I can dip into it. (The nib I use is a Speedball 101.)
Other accessories
For black ink (to outline pictures for the first three kits) I use either a Lamy Safari fountain pen, or a Uni-ball AIR rollerball pen. Either way, I fill my pen of choice with Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink. My favorite brush is an Escoda #8 kolinsky sable travel brush, which packs up into its own handle. My water brushes are the Pentel Aquash brand. I carry all my gear in a little makeup pouch, with a folded paper towel to dab the brush when rinsing and reloading it.
I’m using two papers this month. One is a Hahnemuhle sketchbook with smooth paper that is great for ink. Paint tends to sit on its surface, rather than sinking in, so colors tend to look pale. The other paper is a handmade cotton paper in a Shizen Design sketchbook. Paint sinks into this paper if you get it wet enough, so it’s very different from the Hahnemuhle and I use it for big wet impressionistic sorts of pictures.
