A life of filled with Sketchbooks

Recently, the Islanders (a group Im part of) have been doing a series of posts about each of our sketchbooks and our sketchbooking, so Im posting that post here too.

Right, my sketchbooking life can be broken into two; outdoor sketching, and indoor sketching. Even the outdoor sketching can be split between my kit for painting and my kit for drawing.

For drawing, I always have a little A6 sketchbook in the inside jacket pocket on one side and in the other a little fold up pencil case. (All my jackets must have 2 inside pockets, otherwise they are burnt in flames.... or just not worn)

This is my main sketchbooking, I do this kind of sketching all the time. They are for any time I get a free moment to sketch, whether that is; standing in the queue, having a beer with friends, waiting on transport or a person, sitting in the bus etc, if there is one thing I have learnt from fellow Islander Kevin Gough, its never waste a minute.

I have a variety of pens and pencils in the wrap up pencil case. The pens are mostly just different size nibs as well as different style nibs (felt tipped, hard metal etc), also there is a white pen for highlights and sometimes for error correction and adding white over black. The pencils I carry are: clutch pens, a mechanical pencil, graphite stick, a graphite stick clutch pen etc. Also a white conte pencil, a rubber pencil, some sanding paper for sharpening, a ruler and newly added a Chamomile leather for blending, (not used that much yet). Its amazing how much you can fit into that thing.....

For painting, I carry a camera case for the belt, which I only take on longer walks or Sceitse's, as painting is a longer process thing, it takes 2 or 3 mins just to setup, no matter what kit you have, so not something you do when you have only 2-3 mins to sketch

 Its handy old thing though, as I cram quite a bit into it. It has a watercolour box, an A6 Watercolour pad(I think the same as Mikes), a top of a jar (for water), some rag cuts, small kids paint brushes (so as to fit) and recently added some gouache paint tubes (I havent used them properly yet tho)

The 2nd form of sketchbooking is the stuff I do in indoors, this is to aid final pieces and is geared more towards work and final illustrations. I have several different sketch pads for this, it just depends on the final piece Im working on and what part of the pre-finish piece Im doing. Shown are Hot press papers for paintings, bristol boards for inking, and those cheap moleskins Mike talked about previously, for initial rough sketches for composition, character design etc.  (Also included in the pic below is the tonal paper I use for life drawing, its here solely because I do life drawing indoors :) )

Alot of these pads wouldnt be cheap but not expensive either, middling in price. Generally I do my sketches on the exact same paper as my finals, as I need to know what they will look like before I commit ideas to the final piece. But Im talking more about the more developed idea sketches here rather than initial roughs, which are done in the cheap moleskin as said previously. To show what Im talking about when I say "more developed idea sketches", Ill leave you with ones I did for Corbally Neolithic village before I did the final piece.