Piggyback Post: Sketching Tools

Jackson Fox, inspired by Leah Buhey’s AP newsletter article, posted about the sketching tools he uses and I’m following suit.  I encourage all sketchers to do this.  Let’s create a daisy chain of permalinks for our pen and paper recommendations.

Ink, etc.

I carry a pencil bag with a set of 005, 01, 02, 05 black Micron pens, a rainbow set of 01 Microns, a few Sharpies, a mechanical pencil, a #1 ex-soft leaded pencil, and a set of colored pencils.

Tip: #1 pencils are far better for sketching than #2. They write with little resistence and erase easily.  They’re used in many libraries because they do not damage paper.

Paper

I am a relentless advocate of the 11×17 graph paper sold by Edward Tufte (purchase here, scroll down).  There is a certain gestalt to high quality, oversized paper with subtle grid lines that I cannot accurately convey in words, but I have learned to take advantage of it and have, as a result, created some of my most inspired work on these reasonably priced pads.

Portability, however, is not the strong suit of 11×17 paper, so I carry with me an ink-friendly 5.5″x8.5″ sketch book by Strathmore. 

Tip: The first thing I do in a sketchbook is go through each page and number it w/ a soft pencil.  This helps me reference and later find a specific sketch and also gives me a nice sense of progression as I sketch my way through a book.