Art Lesson #45: Pocket Sketchbook, Revisited

The ultra-light travel sketching kit

By the time you read this, I’ll be waking up in my own bed for the first time in a few weeks. (Actually, I’ll be up and heading to a local TV station for an interview ahead of my final book tour event, here in Portland at Powell’s on Monday.)

I didn’t have a lot of time to sketch on the road. It didn’t help that the heat was pretty unbearable at many of my book tour stops, which kept me from getting out much.

But! Here are a few tips for sketching with a super portable sketchbook, the likes of which we looked at here and here.

• The best art supplies are the ones you have with you! Make this sketching kit so small and light that it’s always with you and you never have to think about it.

• Without a pencil, it might be intimidating to just start drawing. Try placing a few dots around the page to mark where you think the major features should go. The advantage to dots is that if you start drawing and it seems like the dots were in the wrong place, nobody is going to notice them!

• You can also us…