Sketching on the go with a three-year-old in tow

[Guest post by Alex Ragalie, on a mini-European tour of Austria, Germany and Macedonia]

For the summer vacation this year we flew from our home in Dubai to Europe for a 3-week summer tour together with our (highly energetic) 3-year-old daughter.

As those of you with families know, it’s very hard to navigate everyone’s desires and needs and also manage to do any proper sketching yourself. Somehow it seems that getting an ice cream or seeing that great view just around the corner is always more important than Dad’s sketching.

That’s why, after months of trying out every single available option for sketching “on the go”, I developed an extremely lightweight and minimalistic sketching kit that served me well on this trip.

It allows me to take it everywhere, to do relatively finished watercolour sketches as soon as I take it out of my pocket/bag and it’s also extremely compact. 

The components are:

• Kuretake waterbrush

• small watercolor pans from Expeditionary Art glued onto an old credit card

• Sakura Pigma Micron pen

• postcard-size (5″ x 10″), loose sheets of Arches watercolor paper (or other paper)

• Bulldog clips hold my stack of paper all together and can also secure the palette to the stack.

Most of the time I’m stopping for just 5-10 minutes to do the pen drawing. Then I add the watercolour as I’m going away from the scene, all of it while standing and walking, of course.

Here’s the pen stage of the Augustiner Brewery in Munich. A drawing of the Brewery with watercolor is above.

Again, on the go, me doing a quick line drawing of St. Sofia Church in Ohrid Lake, Macedonia.

I’ve never liked zoos before, and I don’t think I ever will, but the one in Munich was the best so far. Our daughter had an amazing time in the small petting zoo, playing with the baby goats, while we enjoyed the impressive variety of animals. And I was able to grab some rhino sketches!

A rhino lazing in the sun

I did over 50 sketches in three weeks on this trip with my family.

I did 5 minute or less sketches in Vienna’s Albertina Museum.

After Egon Schiele

I was able to grab quick studies of people at Munich’s Therme Erding, supposedly the largest thermal bath complex in the world. 

I tested the flexibility of my sketching kit on a half-day trip to St. Naum in Macedonia: I was able to sketch while on a moving boat!

 Overall, I was very happy with my output.  My “on the go” sketch kit really worked for me.

Alex Ragalie, a native of Romania, currently lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he works as a Sales Manager. He sketches with Urban Sketchers Dubai. See more of his work on Flickr. And on his blog.