My Portable Art Kit

About four or five years ago I was spending a lot of time in Cardiff and hung out in Starbucks in the Brewery Quarter quite a bit with my old portable art kit and a tiny little Moleskine sketchbook. The baristas were always fascinated and eager to supply plastic cups of water and endless serviettes for me whilst I painted and sketched away, in the corner, with a latte. Part of the way through doing The Artist's Way and starting to hang out in coffee bars again, it occurred to me that I not only missed my little art kit but that I desperately needed one again. Along with everything else - my inspiration, my motivation and so on- I'd lost the knack of taking my creativity with me wherever I went. So, it was off to the 99p store - and incredible resource for artists, much like the dollar stores in the US - and I picked up two digital camera cases.

Along with everything else - my inspiration, my motivation and so on- I'd lost the knack of taking my creativity with me wherever I went

They needed a wee bit of modifying, as the elastic was fashioned so that the cases were hinged, and I needed it to be across the two halves to provide some security, but that was a simple sewing job. I picked up a travel kit of bottles there as well and some makeup sponges - the travel kit is fabulous for paints, gesso and ink, and I use the makeup sponges for texture or when I want to lay down some gesso quickly. I initially had some cheap makeup brushes, again from the 99p store, for painting with but they were pretty much useless, so now I have a cheap pencil case with a handful of my regular brushes in. The kits are as follows:

• glue stick (not in the picture as my last one ran out and I haven't had time to replace it!)
• nail scissors (again, not in the picture - had some jeans to mend!)
• makeup sponges
• small pot with gesso to prime the pages
• small pot with fluorescent orange (the colour I'm working with at the moment)
• small squeeze bottle full of black ink
• the top of an eyelash brush to spray the ink with
• the other case has my oil pastels and chalks in it
• sometimes I also bring along travel baby wipes for cleanups and the like
• my brushes in a pencil case
• a couple of portable sketchbooks

And that's it! I can pretty much get a lot of collage work and sketch ideas out with that, it didn't cost an awful lot to put together (£2.97 in total for the cases and the bottles), and takes up very little room in my bag. Hope that's given you some ideas for your kit!

And another thing

A handy online cut-up generator for William Burroughs' fans
Cut-Up Machine

I'm going to be making these boxes for my studio
A nifty craft tutorial

Put on the headphones, turn up the volume, mind blown
Funkadelic in your ears