Find the best recommended art supplies every artist needs for urban sketching.
Credit: Shari Blaukopf’s Sketchbook
What is urban sketching?
Urban sketching is a form of artistic reportage that aims to capture a moment in time in a unique and creative way.
These snapshots often place emphasis on urban scenery, architecture and nature, typically created by travelers when visiting unknown locations. Essentially:
Urban sketching is drawing what’s around you and recording it directly in your sketchbook (at that exact moment in time).
Diving more deeply into the realm of urban sketching…
It can be more closely defined as a creative snippet of a part of your daily life. The beauty here is that it can get to the very point where your creative process and art-making has become ingrained within your everyday life.
This form of painting is best achieved through a sketchbook where artists are able to reflect upon explorations, memories and creative endevours all in a convenient place.
On an even more deeper note, urban sketching hugs the present moment more tightly than a quick photo even will.
The active participation of art-making and painting will record a snapshot in time as well as capturing your own unique artistic impression that give rise to nuanced details of the atmosphere and present emotions.
This opens the door for greater mindfulness (allowing for deeper reflection and thought) as well as an escape away from the modern world’s fleeting nature of time that has been worsened by over-edited camera photos.
With that general summary out of the way, here are some recommended art supplies you should consider buying to start urban sketching.
What are the recommended art supplies for urban sketching?
Pencil
Being the most versatile form of drawing media, pencils should be every artist’s bread and butter.
For urban sketching specifically, a mechanical pencil is recommended to avoid the hassle of graphite breakage and the need for sharpening. This is to ensure the sketching process is quick and organic to capture the general feel of the environment.
A good starting point if you haven’t quite explored the world of mechanical pencils is this Pentel GraphGear pencil that you can also find in a set of 4 with available lead refill and erasers.
However, if you’re wanting to test the waters first, any Staetler mechanical pencil across the P205, P207, or P209 ranges are optimal for sketching. In terms of what grade to look for, a HB or B will do.
Ink
Ink pens provide an additional depth to urban sketches that a mere pencil sketch is unable to provide.
This can vary in the form of line-weight, gestures and ink saturation, where there is a bottomless rabbit hole of which inking pens to choose.
I personally recommend that you choose a fine-liner and brush pen when inking your urban sketches to ensure a nice balance between organic brushwork (e.g. thick, smooth) and detailed line-work (e.g. cross hatching). In terms of fine-liners, I’d recommend the following:
From personal experience…
Although I do like the darker pigment of the Sakura Pigma Micron, I’ve found them to smudge after applying water and other water-based mediums on top too quickly.
Despite the Uniball Uni Pin ink being a little more on the saturated size, these fine-liners are way more lightfast and you will find it rare for them to ever smudge with water or watercolors.
The Staedtler pigment liner is a general all-rounder and I’ve never found any troubles when using this pen.
What about the ink brush?
If you’re looking for one that readily reacts with water to create an ink wash, I recommend the Pentel Fude Brush pen. The ink chamber of this brush pen is amazing and I’ve rarely needed to replace the ink.
However, a light-fast and water resistant brush pen that has never failed me (although a little on the pricy side) is the Copic Gasenfude Nylon brush pen. If you’re familiar with Copic, the Gasenfude’s nib is responsive and an absolute pleasure to use with great ink flow and consistency.
Please note that commercial refills are not available for the Gasenfude but will require you to pull apart the pen and manually refill yourself.
Watercolor set
For beginners, the Winsor & Newton Cotman set is a good student-grade set of watercolors to start out with, especially if you’re not too comfortable with the medium.
It’s relatively inexpensive and compact making it optimal for travelling and just urban sketching in general.
However, keep in mind that it’s student-grade label leads to colors that are often saturated and washed out, limited by the quality of pigment.
My best recommendations…
For sets that won’t limit your final product artist-grade sets from premium brands such as Daniel Smith, M Graham and Da Vinci, with deep pigments and strong granulating colors that are far superior to their respective student-grade counterparts.
Here is the set I started out with that I’d personally recommend:
For more information on the best premium watercolor paints to purchase, I’ve laid it all out in this ‘all-in-one’ post to help you out.
For urban sketching, an enormous set with 24 or more colors is overkill and can be highly inconvenient when using in a live, street environment.
A set of 12 is the sweet spot and look for a good range of warm and cool pigments. After this, you can build upon your favorite twelve watercolors of your choosing my selecting individual pans to purchase.
Watercolor brushes
My BIGGEST piece of advice here:
Is too spend a little more than you would think on brushes. Doing this will ensure you invest in a good quality brush that will last you years.
The quality of brushes lies predominantly in the brush hairs itself, whereby natural hairs are the most delicate, water retaining and smooth to use, however, are the most expensive compared to synthetic brushes.
My post on the best quality brushes for watercolor painting will give you a way more in depth answer for which brush to select.
However…
You cannot go wrong with the Da Vinci Tobolsky Kolinsky Series 10 range (this is pretty much the cème de la crème of brushes) or Winsor and Newton’s Series 7 brushes.
You absolutely do not need to go crazy and spend this much on brushes if you’re not willing as alternatives like the Princeton Neptune synthetic brush range designed to emulate squirrel hair (although classified as “synthetic”) will be more than sound for your urban sketches.
In terms of what brush size to buy, I’d go for a round size 10 (for washes), a size 6 (for general painting), a flat brush of your choosing (for painting straight edges) as well as a smaller brush with a size below 5 (for details).
Miscellaneous supplies
Other supplies you may want to consider to further streamline the urban sketching process includes a:
Cloth
Environmentally friendly replacement for paper towels
Kneadable eraser
Multi-shaped eraser to mould pencil work
Spray bottle
Used to activate paints on the go
White gel pen
Effective for highlights (e.g. glass objects, water)
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