Art Lesson #9: Drawing tools for pocket sketchbooks

Pens, markers, and colored pencils

Last week, I showed you some of my favorite options for a pocket sketchbook. This week, we’re looking at drawing tools, like pens, pencils, and markers, that are ideal for carrying around with a pocket sketchbook.

The idea here is that you’ll find a small sketchbook and some kind of drawing tool that you can always carry with you. Ideally, it’s always stashed in your bag or your jacket pocket, so you don’t ever even think about it.

If you’re traveling, this is the ultra-lightweight kit you carry when you’re not sure you want to lug a bag of sketching supplies around. You can always cut pages out of a pocket sketchbook and glue them into a larger sketchbook, if you want to keep all your memories of the trip in one place.

You can also make a really great 30-day art project out of taking a pocket sketchbook for a walk every day (even if that walk is just to the kitchen table to draw your salt and pepper shakers), and carrying one or two different drawing tools with you every day.

Suggestions:

• A drawing pen paired with a brush tip marker

• A brush tip marker paired with a colored pencil

• Any color, paired with a deep grey brush pen for shadows

• One light and one dark, same color (light and dark green, for instance)

• Interesting color combos, like lime green and magenta, or gold and dark blue.

Draw whatever you see, without worrying about realistic colors. Let the trees be blue, and the sky yellow, if that’s what you have with you! Trust me, a whole sketchbook of these will look really interesting when you’re done.

Plus, if you always have a pocket sketchbook on you, you have a place to take notes, make lists, and so on. Why use your phone, when you can make a little record of your life right in your notebook? When we went to Cuba, my husband wrote down everything we spent money on and how much it cost. Those daily totals ran along the bottom of every page of my sketches. It was actually really interesting to look back on those small daily details!

OK, on to the drawing tools

Here are some great drawing pens that are also good for writing things down. This is what I carry with me most often.

Another option: markers or brush pens. Wonderful for laying down rich, thick color, not so great for writing. If I’m going somewhere that might be a good place to sketch, I’m more likely to take one of these along with my regular drawing pen. (I don’t know why I started abbreviating Faber Castell as FB instead of FC in this video. Too many abbreviations, with all these pen sizes and categories.)

And here are some of my favorite colored pencils. Pencils are tricky—if you’re looking to carry around one easy drawing tool that you’ll always have on you, pencils usually involve a sharpener. So this takes a bit more planning. Maybe you take a different freshly-sharpened colored pencil (or two!) out with you each day. Or maybe you don’t mind carrying a sharpener— it all depends on what kind of bag you walk around with.

Supplies

I’m not going to list every drawing tool I showed here, but if you’re having trouble finding one, post a comment and I’ll help. Here are my top personal favorites:

Tombow Fudenosuke. The black is waterproof, the others, less so.

Pentel Brush Sign Pen. Fabulous, many colors, not waterproof.

Faber Castell Pitt brush artist pens

Faber Castell Pitt calligraphy pens

Caran D’Ache Luminance colored pencils

Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils

Magic Pencil

Pentel mechanical pencil. My favorite leads are these Rotring .7 2B because they’re darker and smoother.

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I feel like we should do something for the holidays!

In that first year of covid, when many of us had to be apart from our families at the holidays, I took a Zoom art workshop where we filled pages with these very loose winter-ish, holiday-ish, designs. I cut mine up and used them as gift tags to send many small crazy presents to my parents.

What do you think about a live Zoom where we fill pages with winter-ish motifs, and just chat and hang out together? The recording would go out to everyone so you don’t have to be there in person.

Let me know in the comments if you’d like to do that, and generally what days/times work best for you—like weeknights? Saturday or Sunday day/evening? Maybe the week after Thanksgiving?

Also, I am always taking requests! Let me know if there’s something you especially want to learn or practice or study up on.

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Our chat is lots of fun!

We’re posting pictures of our art and cheering each other on in a private, subscriber-only chat. If you’d like to join in, here it is. I’ll start a new one every month or so:

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The Bit at the End

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