“But I Might Need it”: How to Downsize Your Kit

2013 (Note the spare ink cartridges and multiple waterbrushes)

Long-time readers of this blog have seen my sketch kit get smaller over the years. Sometimes the reduction was only temporary, and more materials eventually crept back in. Sometimes the reduction was only hypothetical (search the term “Gilligan’s Island” on my blog, and you’ll find many examples of how I’d pack my kit for that fateful “three-hour tour”).

It took a global pandemic to shrink my sketch kit permanently. Once I got used to a daily-carry bag that was small and light enough to take fitness walks with, there was no going back. Even when I occasionally missed the so-called “full arsenal,” I enjoyed the liberty of lightness too much.

2015

Seeing my compact bag and kit, other sketchers have exclaimed that they’d like to get their own sketch kits (hauled in a huge backpack or wheeled bag) down to a more manageable size, but they just haven’t figured out how. Peering into their bags, I can see that they continuously carry items they “might need,” yet they confess they have not used them in months/years/decades. (By the way, all of this resonates with general downsizing of an entire home, if you catch my drift.)

I’ve noticed that often the people who seem overburdened by their loads are the same people who lament that they don’t get out to sketch as much as they’d like. Hmmm . . . ya think there’s a connection?

2016 (This was my most mixed-media year! I loved fountain pens,
markers, watercolors, watercolor pencils and brush pens, and darned
if I wasn't going to bring them all to the Manchester symposium!

While it’s none of my business how much stuff others want to haul around, I believe strongly that anything that keeps you from sketching as much (or as easily) as you’d like is a problem. The objective is to sketch, and we shouldn’t let carrying our materials keep us from that objective. (For that matter, we shouldn’t let owning too many materials keep us from that objective. See: downsizing.)

I’ve been thinking for a while about writing this post, and my recent visit to Poulsbo when I inadvertently left behind my auxiliary tote bag reminded me of the very points I wanted to make in such a post (and I had to listen to my own lecture that day). The first bullet point is my guiding principle for carrying less. The other points are suggestions on ways to downsize:

2018 (disregard the numbers; they refer to a different post)

• Having fewer options “forces” more creative solutions. A favorite example is when I was sketching a fire station during a minimalism challenge – and I had no red! How could I possibly sketch a fire station without red? Ta-da – my four-color ballpoint pen (which I keep in my bag for general notetaking, not sketching) came to my rescue.
• A friend and I just had a conversation about how the 80/20 rule applies to sketch kits: We all use about 20 percent of our materials 80 percent of the time. That rule applies even with my minimal kit. Consider which items you use 80 percent of the time and remove the rest.
• Whatever is your color medium of choice, choose a minimal palette – say, six to 10 colors. Esthetically, a limited palette looks more cohesive. It also encourages mixing and experimenting with hues that at first may not seem “right.” Some of my favorite sketches have been primary and secondary triad experiments. One time, I was dismayed that my limited palette didn’t include the right periwinkle hue to sketch a Bachelor’s Button. I was “forced” to optically mix some unexpected colors, and I was delighted with the result.

• 

  2021 (This version of my pandemic kit was minimal even for me!)

  Stop prepping for every possible sketch “emergency.” I used to carry a small pencil sharpener routinely. It’s tiny and doesn’t weigh much, so it seemed like an easy carry. The one or two times I actually needed it, though, it was lost at the bottom of my bag. It wasn’t worth the bother of digging it out. I finally took the sharpener out and instead use other sharpeners at home that do the job more effectively.
• Along the same lines, stop carrying “spares” of favorite materials. This was a biggie whenever I traveled. I knew I couldn’t just go back home to get more, and local stores might not carry exactly what I needed, so I always carried extras (pencils, pens, ink refills, entire sketchbooks) of things I felt I couldn’t live without. Almost always, I brought them all home again without using them. On all my post-pandemic trips (Dallas, Portland and L.A.), I cut the cord on spares. Guess what? I lived!

(Shown in this post are a few of my sketch kits over the years. For a look at all past sketch kits and bags, see my Sketch Kit Archive page.)

Current: lean and mean