My Minimalist Travel Sketching Gear & Setup
My journey for minimal travel sketching started in 2018 when I was planning a trip to Alaska. At this time I was still using oil paints and I felt it would be a major hassle to bring all my oil painting gear, tubes of paint, solvent, and pochade box with a tripod to Alaska. It just didn’t seem feasible. I had to find a way to paint on location for my first and only trip to Alaska. This trip was going to be too good not to paint there.
I decided to look around the internet a bit and did a lot of research. I eventually came to the conclusion that I should try watercolor for plein air or travel sketching. One of my major influences, John Singer Sargent, did this in his later years in life after he gave up oil portrait painting. And I already had a little bit of experience with watercolors at this time but not much. I saw myself as an oil painter.
I had about 3 to 4 weeks to buy and order all the gear I would need and practice a few times with watercolors outside to test my gear before I left. This led me on a pursuit to create a truly minimal setup that I could use almost anywhere at any time.
I have to give credit to Marco Bucci, who I found on YouTube and he is a great artist. I saw one or two of his travel sketching videos at that time and they highly influenced and inspired my setup but I did make a few changes to suit my own preferences.
Over the years, I’ve pretty much used the same setup as I did on that first trip to Alaska in May 2018. I will share with you what I use and how I think about my gear and how I’ve been able to keep it minimal and focus on the essentials for maximum efficiency.
My Painting Gear
The current gear I use is quite light and compact, and I’ve found it to work well in almost every scenario I’ve found myself in over the past few years of using it.
I truly wanted something which I could bring anywhere - plane, train, bus, bike, or car - and not have any issues. And also small and light enough that I could walk around all day carrying it or hike with it, and not get tired of carrying it.
This led me to think about what gear was actually essential for me and my purposes. At the moment, I love doing solely watercolor sketches in a sketchbook. Eventually, I may play around with pen & ink with the watercolors, but I just haven’t had the desire to do that just yet.
This is what I decided was absolutely essential when it comes to painting outdoors and on location:
Paint
Brushes
Sketchbook
Bag
Water
Water Cups
Washcloth (for me, better than paper towels)
Pencil / Eraser
This is really all I need to create a small watercolor sketch from life, anywhere in the world. Through my experience over the years, I’ve found a few other optional items I can add in my bag from time to time:
Small electric hand-held fan
Small spray bottle (mist)
0.7mm White POSCA paint pen
Sony Action Camera x-3000 (for filming my painting)
Small Clamp with Tripod Mount (for holding the action cam)
These items are useful in some situations but not always needed. The electric fan is good to use in colder weather to help speed up the drying time between layers. Painting outdoors is no joke (but it is fun), and the light moves quickly. I don’t want to waste any time when it comes to capturing the moment in paint.
The small spray bottle is a tiny mister bottle which is best used in very hot conditions. I’ve painted in midsummer in the direct sun when I had no other choice and my paint would dry about 10 seconds after I laid it on the page. Almost impossible to do watercolors in a traditional manner when I’m in those conditions. So sometimes, being able to spray the paper or a wash I just put down is super helpful.
The paint pen is helpful for bringing out small necessary highlights if I ever accidentally paint over something important.
The action camera is just for my vlogging and documenting purposes. I’ve documented every plein air painting I’ve done since mid-2018. And it’s fun to look back and see where I’ve been and how I’ve improved (if at all).
Moving Forward
Recently I purchased a new camera and I now bring this out with me on my travel sketching day-trips to film and take photos of the landscape. This is just what I love to do - document my experiences and create a video from it all. So, I might end up using a slightly larger bag to carry my gear but even the camera and gear that I bring is quite minimal. Just some extra batteries and an extra lens.
That’s really the only change I will probably make to my gear moving forward. And that actually has nothing to do with the painting process or painting gear. It’s just my other hobby, which is photography and videography.
Travel sketching and the gear you bring is a highly personal situation, and I understand that most people might look at my list and think it is way too minimal. And that’s okay. I just hope it helps you in some way look at your own gear and determine what is truly necessary to bring when you travel to create the sketches you want to create.
At the end of the day, it’s just about having fun and enjoying the experiences.
