New sketch kit

Happy (US) Independence Day! I hope you all have had a good and safe holiday. We had a really nice day cruising around the area looking at homes for sale, baking cookies for a nice elderly couple next door and finally going to a wonderful party at a neighbor's home. :-)

This past weekend I decided to redo my current sketch kit. The old one just wasn't feeling quite right any more. Here’s my new configuration.

My new sketch kit - so far, I'm pretty happy with it.

I have added all new half pans to my old Winsor & Newton Cotman travel watercolor box and filled them with a new palette of Daniel Smith watercolors. Here are the colors I’ve chosen: Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Gold, French Ochre, Transparent Red Oxide, Transparent Pyrrol Orange, Quinacridone Coral, Cobalt Blue Violet, Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine, Venetian Red, Sepia, Serpentine Genuine, and Payne’s Grey.

Also in my kit I have two Noodler’s Flex pens (one filled with Platinum Carbon Black and the other with Noodler’s Fox Red), two waterbrushes, a ruler, pencil, tiny eraser, and a tiny travel brush (that I may yet replace with a better folding brush.) Add to this some paper towels, a pencil case and my moleskin, and I’m ready to go.

Here are the first two sketches I made with this particular kit.

Another thing I’m working on right now is simplifying the pen work in my sketches to make more “room” for the color. I’m pretty happy with these first two attempts. Using simpler pen lines makes the entire drawing seem more peaceful and I like that. I'm looking forward to some sketching time this week for more "road testing." ;-)