Watercolor Journaling kits

I have 2 watercolor journaling kits.  The small kit is designed to carry everywhere; meetings, museums, gardens, restaurants, and traveling by boat, trains or planes.  It contains the minimum items I need for painting:

• Paper Mate Sharpwriter mechanical pencil
• One black fine tip permanent ink pens
• Set of water brushes (3 round and 1 flat)
• Artists erasers (Factis Artists eraser or Prismacolor kneaded eraser)
• 2 oz dropper bottle
• Kleenex packet
• Small watercolor journal or block (a Moleskin watercolor notebook and watercolor block of postcards are in the photo below)
• Watercolor travel kit with professional paints (a Van Gough Watercolor Pocket Box is in the photo below)
• Waterproof clutch I found at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville several years ago.

My large watercolor kit I use for sketch crawls, weekend trips and hiking.  

• All the items listed above for the small kit
• 2 oz spray bottle
• Several Kleenex packets
• One Copic sepia fine tip permanent ink pen 
• 6" plastic ruler 
• 6" plastic triangle
• X-Acto retractable knife
• Clear wax crayon
• Guerrilla painter composition finder
• Gray scale and value finder
• Spiral bound Strathmore visual journals 

In addition to the what is needed to paint, this larger kit has space for a water bottle, snack, sunglasses and a hat.  If I will be out in the sun for a long time I also take a three legged folding chair and a portable shade umbrella.   

I purchase many supplies from local art stores, but I also shop on line with the following venders:

• Blick Art Materials
• Judsons Art Outfitters
• REI
• Jerrys Artarama
• Cheep Joe's Art Stuff

Watercolor project notebooks

I have a few watercolor project notebooks for different types of painting.  All contain written notes, sketches and swatches of paint.

I use small watercolor pads for testing paint mixes while painting. 

I use a medium size one for first drafts of cards.

The largest one is a sketch book used for projects.

The paint testing watercolor pad (shown to the right) has descriptions and examples of color mixes.  Tests for paint transparency.  It also includes the recipe I use as a base for shadows.  

Below are two pages from a card note pad.  They are test paintings with swatches that identify the colors and mixes used in the painting.  

The project notebook has sketches, quick paintings, swatches of paint and notes on colors and each test painting that was done.  The page on the left is were done aa part of the Dynamic Watercolors workshop I took at the J. C. Campbell Folk School.  The page on the right are working notes for two paintings from photos of the Grand Tetons National Park.

Journals and bookmaking notes

One of the items I took to my first bookmaking class was a handmade journal someone had given me to keep notes in.  

My journals include:

• Class notes.
• Quick sketches.  
• Scraps of paper and leather.
• Cord to illustrate twists and knots.
• Other items used in bookmaking.

Keeping journals is very helpful.  I refer back to them all the time to find out what type of paper I used for pages, how many pages were in each signature, what were the page and cover dimensions, what dye I used on the paper, how to stitch a spine pattern or tie a knot.  I have even sent photos of my journal pages to someone else to explain how to make a book.