Make Yourself a Drawing Kit

Make a drawing kit for yourself. The best one is the one you have with you when you want to draw, so keep it simple and small.

It can be: 

your very favorite fancy markers and easel and pens and ink and paints, only if you will get out there and use it!

 (drawing kits from the Artist's Guide to Sketching by Gurney and Kinkade; 1982)

 

It can be your plain ordinary sketchbook and a pen or sharp pencil, in a chair by the window,

or a spot where you can draw someone cooking in the kitchen, or playing in the living room, or curled up on the couch.

 

It can be in a bag you take for a walk or sit and watch people walking by with their dogs. 

This is the sketching satchel of my dreams. I stock it differently, depending on what I'm going to use it for.

These days, it contains:

-jack knife for sharpening pencils

-walnut ink and brushes and dip pens

-pens I can grab and draw quickly with

-portable watercolor box with trays for mixing colors, a water brush that has water for painting inside of it, and a scrap of cloth for cleaning the brush and switching colors

It can be any kind of little notebook that fits in your pocket. 

This is my pocket notebook. I fill it with handsewn folios of art paper, and it holds shut with a leather thong, so the pages don't rub and smear if I carry it around in my bag or pocket. It's refillable.You can see more of my watercolor supplies, and another beloved satchel, in an older post on my setup.

 This is just index cards clamped together with a binder clip.The index card stack, sometimes called the Hipster's Personal Digital Assistant, actually works great. Fits in a shirt or jacket pocket, or cargo pants pocket.

I've also done the index card stack with a strong rubber band like the kind that holds brocolli together when you get a bunch from the grocery store.  

An advantage of this simple setup is you can keep a pencil under the rubberband.

 Any suitably sized box or tin can hold your supplies. I hold this shut with a broccoli rubber band.

It can't be:

-a notebook that you don't know where it is, 

-a pen that doesn't write well, 

-or a pencil with a broken point and no eraser.

 The best drawing kit is:
-the one you have with you,
-that you take out,
-that you like to use,
-and that you actually do use!

 Take whatever you have,

start where you are, 

and do what you can!

You will turn your simple paper and pen or pencil into a world-class drawing studio!

 An entry from my Drawing Diary, clockwise from top left:

-my empty plate after pancakes with knife and fork

-close-up of Paul, in the car

-trees next to the porch, 

-from a book I'm reading; "Writing a story isn't about making your peaceful fantasies come true. The whole point of the story is the character arc. You didn't think joy could change a person, did you? Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it's conflict that changes a person. You put your characters through hell. You put them through hell. That's the only way we can change." -Don Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

 

Or, you could be like E. H. Shepherd, illustrator of Wind in the Willows and Winnie The Pooh, and draw on every envelope and greeting card and advertisement and bill that comes your way. Draw in the margins. Draw what you see. Draw what you hope. Draw what you imagine. Draw on on the front and draw on the back. 

Your assignment today: Make yourself a drawing kit. Set it up to use it, and make an entry in your daily drawing diary. If you already have a kit you like, draw a picture of it in your diary to share with us!