Blended family

Summer sketching with versatile materials

Before every vacation I try to compose my travel sketching kit, a perfectly balanced and rounded selection of pens and pencils that will make daily sketching on the go super easy and convenient. But which materials will actually get used and which will never leave my suitcase?

I thought I had it all figured out this past April when I packed my travel sketching kit for Bologna (we all know how much free time a major book fair offers to a casual sketcher…) – it contained various dry and watercolour pencils, a few markers and pens plus a water brush. I included a small selection of my Neocolor II pastels, as many as I could squeeze into a small plastic box they sell ear plugs in at the pharmacy.

I hardly opened my pencil case during the fair (I partially blame the rainy weather) and even then I didn’t much care for my water soluble pencils – I was missing my oil pastels and the blending medium of odourless mineral spirit that I recently discovered and have been sketching with more and more.

If you follow my Substack notes, you’ve seen my recent sketching practice: I start with a light coloured pencil (like a cream beige, a warm pink or a sage green one) and trace out the main shapes. Then I fill them in with oil pastels and Neocolors and smudge them with cotton bud dipped in mineral spirit. I add colour pencils on top, blend parts some more and leave parts crisp and detailed - all of these dry materials merge together like a happy blended family.

Well, some perhaps more than others as it also depends on the quality of paper. I love my Talens Art Creation sketchbooks, they are affordable, subtly ivory coloured and come in different formats, but the best blending results are still achieved on a slightly thicker, mix media or watercolour paper. (Perhaps I’ll pick a handmade sketchbook, made with papers of different types and textures for my next vacation.)

And as much as I love the creamy oil pastels, I would be reluctant to include them in my travel sketching kit - on a particularly hot day they would melt into a rainbow puddle. That is why I love how Neocolor water soluble pastels, which are quite sturdy and dry, will blend beautifully with both water and mineral spirit, making them a perfect, versatile travel sketching tool.

Here are some examples of different pencils, blended with mineral spirit, water or both (Neocolor II), offering a variety of textures:

Three dry pencils (Luminance, Polychromos and Prismacolor, from left) blended with mineral spirit, and three water solubles (Museum Aquarelle, Albrecht Dürer and Neocolor II) each blended with water (swatch left) and mineral spirit (swatch right)

Now that I’ve confidently replaces oil pastels with Neocolor crayons for sketching on the go, I had to find a travel friendly container for my mineral spirit that usually comes in a large and clumsy rectangular bottle. I’ve already decanted some of it into a handy glass bottle with a pipette that makes it easy to add a drop at the time to my mixing palette when I sketch at home (my palette is usually a small ceramic plate, a tin lid or even a plastic bottle cap). I recently got a tester of face serum from a cosmetics rep and it came in this tiny bottle with a tiny pipette dropper, perfect for my travel sketching kit since a spoonful of the liquid is all one needs for a week of sketching.

My latest sketches have been done in Neocolors alone though I still love the fine detail pencils bring - but sometimes I get braver and more spontaneous when the tool is duller and less precise, forcing me to make quick decisions and stick to them. Below is such sketch made with the Neocolors only.

But how to pick which Neocolors to pack? I have around 60 of them and I love every single hue. And yes, I could mix most of them by combining two or three more basic colours but I don’t always feel like doing that, sometimes I just need to pick up the right crayon and start drawing (spontaneity and all that).

So… for my next trip I decided to pack a dozen of summer-esque Neocolors that I mostly used in my recent sketches, and I complemented the palette with a selection of coloured pencils - lots of greens and blues with a few spicy highlights. Today I tried out my travel kit and strictly used only what was in my new pencil case. I think I’m good for another trip or two… until I change my mind again!

Which materials are in your travel sketching kit?

I hope you are having a fabulous, creative summer!