Sketch Kits: Hiking with art supplies

Sketch kits generally are art supplies you carry with you. You can sketch when hiking, kayaking, in museums, at the beach, on airplanes, on the street, or in cafes. You can sketch in the open or in secret.

You can carry art supplies in a saddle bag across the continental divide in the Montana mountains to draw wolf tracks, which I've done.

But you cannot carry every darn tube of paint and pencil box with you, so sketch kits need to be selected for media and environment. When I first started trying to do this, I had no idea how or what to carry. I have carried as much as twenty pounds of art supplies in a pack -- which is of course ridiculous. But I've got it pared down now. This kit is the result of years of trial and error.

Sketching, generally, is done quickly, something for future reference or just to mark down the spirit of a moment, the feel of a place. So your tools should mirror that. You wouldn't try to do a woodblock print as a sketch. But you needn't limit yourself to just a pencil or a pen. I've tried to pack as much as I can into this small box, which fits easily in a backpack, still letting me use whatever medium strikes me.

For ink sketching I use Micron pens. These are easier to carry on a hike, though I still prefer the old dip pens. Line weights of 01 03 05 and 08 seem to be the most useful to me. 01 and 05 probably get used the most.

For pencil sketches, I have pencils in 6B, 4B, H, 3H. I have a dark pencil with a fat lead, along with the graphite wash pencil. I carry a pencil sharpener for these. For penciling I take a kneaded eraser and a plastic eraser.

I take home-made eraser shields with me. More on that soon.

The pen knife is useful for sharpening a bamboo pen which I sometimes take along (Yes, a pen knife actually being used to sharpen a pen!), as well as for shaping the leads on the charcoal and fat pencils. It's also handy for other slicing and dicing.

For watercoloring and other water media, a waterbrush pen is essential. Having one of these helps eliminate carrying a bulky container of water for the brush. You can use the waterbrush pen with ink, graphite, watercolor pencils, water soluble crayons and more. Carry the watercolors, pencils and crayons separately -- sometimes taking your watercolor pencils, sometimes your crayons, depending on the length of the hike or the weight of the other supplies you carry.

I once carried as many as five. But I've reduced the number of waterbrush pens I carry to two. One is filled with ink diluted to a value of 5 on a 10 point scale. The other is filled with clear water. In this way I can do ink wash sketches with the two of them. I can also use the one filled with clear water for sketches in water soluble crayons, watercolor, or other water based media. I use it, too, with the water soluble graphite pencil in my kit.

For brushes I take a fine brush, a filbert, and a medium sized one for wash. These are for the graphite wash pencil or the watercolors and water soluble crayons I may pack separately. The filbert brush gets used most often. Sometimes I can find water on the trail, sometimes I'll use a little out of that which I've brought for drinking.

For the water media, I carry a small natural sponge. It is also useful for preventing the pencils from rattling, which might drown out the sound of something I want (or need) to hear while hiking.

I've added some charcoal and red and white pastel for drawing on toned paper -- something I've started doing more of these days. The blending stump is for both the charcoal and the pencil.

The ruler helps with straight lines and proportions -- when I suddenly care deeply about that -- not often.

All this is fitted into a plastic box which is 9 inches long, 4.5 inches wide, and a little more than an inch deep. The box is Plano Molding Co., Plano Guide Series, Model 3540. The box has a gasket so it seals, which is good in case the pens leak. You can find this kind of box at fishing and outdoor stores. Cheap, too.

I like to hike out to some odd place and sketch what I find there.

I've got sketchbooks I like, but I also like to use different media on different papers. Sometimes I want to do this on the same hiking trip. Also I sometimes take loose signatures of paper that I later bind into a book after they are filled with sketches and hen-scratch.

Backpacks tend to bend the corners on pads of paper, plus all the jumble in there sometimes dents the pad.

I don't like how paper carried rolled in tubes wants to curl when you are trying to draw on it. So here's my solution.

Go to the hobby store and get two very thin pieces of birch plywood. You could also use acrylic sheets, but I like the feel of wood.

Cut them so they fit your bag or backpack. Mine are 12.5" x 8".

Round the corners so they won't poke holes in your backpack.

You can varnish it, or not, as I did.

Now use two (or 4) clips to sandwich various pieces of paper between the boards.

Besides carrying your paper the boards can be used as a lap drawing board, or as a flat place to put your palette, or water jar.

The clips can double for holding the paper on the board when you are drawing in the wind.

These boards can also serve as a way to press leaves you find in the wild, too. Be sure to put some wax paper in there for that, so the leaves don't get goo on your fine sketches.