Sketching tools, or the portable studio...

The name of this blog, Annas Ateljé, means Anna's studio in swedish. The truth is that I don´t really have much of a studio. I do have a corner in the basement where I can keep my stuff and a small table to sit and paint at. In theory, this is very practical since I would not have to clean up my stuff every time I have painted. However, in practice, I don´t spend much time there. It is hard to find time to just sit down and paint at home with three kids hanging in my skirt and all the dishes and laundry staring at me.... Also, when I do have time, I much prefer sitting in the living room or at the kitchen table. So the solution has been to develop a kind of a portable studio. In a middle-sized handbag I keep most of what I need to sketch and to paint smaller watercolors:

Among the contents might be found a water bottle, a foldable mug, a travel kit with paint, some brushes, a miniature ink bottle, some pens and pencils, a miniature spray bottle, a squeeze bottle of masking fluid and some other random stuff. I also keep a couple of small watercolor paper blocks and my sketchbook.

This way, it is possible to quickly get set up to paint or sketch anywhere. Even in the bathroom...  It so happens that this is the room with best lightning in the house. It also allows instant access to water, a floor where I can splash around all I want and, as an added bonus, it provides an alibi - I can say I need time to take a shower and then sneek off to paint. One does get quite desperate sometimes on the quest to find time to create...

I also have a kind of emergency kit which always sits in my small handbag - a box with nine half-pans (glued in and refilled with tube paint), a water brush, a foldable travel brush, a pencil, a Lamy Safari with grey ink and a small Sharpie marker. This way, I can just grab my sketchbook or paint on something else if I  have forgotten it. I sometimes also keep a postcard size watercolor block in my bag. I find it is very good practice to paint with a limited palette and I must say one can get along quite well with just nine colors. I vary them a bit, but in the box above I keep Indigo, French Ultramarine, Cyan (from Lukas), Raw Sienna, New Gamboge, Winsor Lemon, Vandyke Brown, Winsor Violet and Permanent Rose. In the 12 color box I have the same colors plus Perylene Green, Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber at the moment.