Mini Sketch Kit Ready To Go

Next month we are embarking on a long road trip from Arizona to Washington D.C. and even beyond to New York City!  So naturally I want to take along a watercolor sketch kit to do some trip journal-keeping, and I need to keep it small so I can always have it with me when I walk around these cities.  So here is the kit I am going to try, all contained in the Eagle Creek XS Pack-It-Sac.

First is the watercolor sketchbook itself, which I recent made using coptic binding and Strathmore Aquarius II watercolor paper.  The size of the journal is 3 1/2 x 5", which opens nice and flat to a 5 x 7" 2-page spread.  This will be the first time I've worked with this paper, but I chose it because it is nice and thin.  I made the book using four signatures, and each signature has four folios (i.e. 8 pages) each.  So this little sketchbook has  32 pages, comparable to a pocket watercolor Moleskine.  The cover is made with leather scraps, with the holes reinforced by 140lb watercolor paper I glued to the leather.

The watercolor palette comprises 5 half-pans of paint glued using rubber cement to the inside of an Altoids Smalls tin.  The colors I have in the palette are based on the "artist's primaries" palette on handprint.com:  Daniel Smith New Gamboge, DaVinci Red Rose Deep, DaVinci French Ultramarine, Daniel Smith Phthalo Green YS, and Daniel Smith Burnt Sienna.  I used rubber cement to adhere a cut-to-fit piece of a yogurt container to the top of the tin for mixing.

To round out the kit I have a Mini mister spray bottle, a large Niji waterbrush, a Platinum Carbon fountain pen filled with platinum carbon ink, a cuff to an old sock to wipe the waterbrush, a slide holder to help me frame my sketches, and a piece of Yupo paper cut to the size of my sketchbook to use as a color mixing palette.