The Ultimate Urban Sketching Kit (And Why Your Paint Might Be the Problem)
By Dalton Scolman
You found the perfect spot. Cute cafe, golden afternoon light, a street scene that's practically begging to be painted. You pull out your kit and... it takes you ten minutes to get set up. Your water jar tips over. Your pans are dried out and chalky. And by the time you're ready, the light has changed and so has your mood.
Sound familiar? Yeah. We've been there too.
Here's the thing about urban sketching: the supplies that work beautifully in a studio can completely let you down on location. And most watercolor kits weren't designed with the chaos of real life in mind. They were designed for a table, good lighting, and all the time in the world.
This guide is for the artists who want to actually paint outside, not just plan to. Here's what to bring, what to skip, and why the format of your paint matters way more than most people talk about.
What Urban Sketching Actually Needs From Your Kit
Before we get into specific supplies, let's talk about what the experience actually demands. Urban sketching is fast. Spontaneous. Sometimes you're sitting on a curb, sometimes you're perched on a cafe chair with your bag on your lap, sometimes you've got exactly 20 minutes before your coffee gets cold and your parking meter runs out.
Your kit needs to work with that energy, not against it.
The things that derail a sketching session aren't usually skill-related. They're logistics. A palette that won't open one-handed. A water jar that sloshes everywhere on the bus ride over. Paint that needs five minutes of rewetting before it gives you a usable color. These are the friction points that turn a fun outing into a frustrating one.
So the golden rules for your urban sketching kit are: light, fast, and forgiving. Everything else is a bonus.
Your Sketchbook: The Foundation of Everything
Your sketchbook is doing a lot of work. It needs to handle water without warping into a disaster, lay flat while you paint, and be small enough to actually fit in your bag.
For watercolor, you want paper that's at least 140lb (300gsm). Anything lighter and you'll get that awful buckling effect where your wet washes dry into wrinkly mountains. Cotton paper handles water the best, but it's pricier. A good mixed media paper is a totally reasonable starting point.
Size-wise, A5 (roughly 5x8 inches) is the sweet spot for sketching on location. Big enough to actually paint something satisfying, small enough to balance on your lap without needing a table.
Some favorites in the urban sketching community: Hahnemuhle watercolor books, Stillman and Birn Alpha or Beta series, and Moleskine watercolor journals (though the Moleskine paper is thinner so use lighter washes).
Honestly? The best sketchbook is the one you'll actually take with you. Don't let perfect be the enemy of fun here.
Your Pen: The Secret to Stress-Free Watercolor Sketching
A lot of urban sketchers work in line and wash, which means you draw your lines first with a pen, then layer watercolor on top. This is one of the most forgiving ways to work outside because your lines do the structural work and your color gets to be loose and expressive.
The key word here is waterproof. If your pen isn't waterproof, your beautiful ink lines will bleed into your wash and everything turns into a muddy disaster.
The Sakura Pigma Micron fineliners are a classic choice and genuinely excellent. They come in a few nib sizes (0.3 and 0.5 are the most useful for sketching), they're waterproof, and they're inexpensive enough that losing one doesn't hurt too bad.
If you want to level up, a fountain pen with waterproof ink like Platinum Carbon Black gives you a much more expressive, varied line. But it requires a bit more maintenance and the ink situation is a little more involved. Great once you're comfortable, maybe not the first thing to learn.
A pencil is also totally valid as an underdrawing tool, especially if you're newer to sketching. You can erase it later or just let it show through your washes.
Your Watercolor Paint: This Is Where Things Get Interesting
Okay, let's talk about the elephant in the room: most watercolor paint formats were not designed for urban sketching.
Tubes are wonderful in a studio where you can lay out a fresh palette every session. On location, they're messy, they need time to dry on your palette before traveling, and forgetting to cap one properly is a very bad day.
Pans are more portable than tubes, but they have their own issues. Metal tins are heavy. The pans dry out and get chalky. You need to wet them down and wait for them to activate before the color really sings. And if you're working fast, that lag time matters.
Here's what most guides won't tell you: there's a third option. And for urban sketching specifically, it might be the best one.
Nicholson's Peerless Watercolors come as DryColor Sheets, which are basically little cards coated in highly concentrated watercolor dye. You just touch a wet brush to the sheet and the color activates instantly. No wetting, no waiting, no dried-out pans. The colors are vibrant, they're transparent, and they travel in a format that's genuinely flat and lightweight.
The Sidekick palette fits 45 colors into something roughly the size of a checkbook. It weighs almost nothing. It fits in a jacket pocket. And because the colors are concentrated, a little goes a really long way.
For urban sketching, this format makes a lot of sense. There's no spillable water jar involved in activating your paint (just your waterbrush, which you control completely), the colors are bright and layerable, and the whole thing is genuinely mess-free in a way that pans and tubes just can't match.
The one honest caveat: these are dye-based rather than pigment-based, so they're not rated for the same lightfastness as professional pigment watercolors. If you're creating work meant to last decades, that's worth knowing. But for sketchbooks, journaling, studies, and just the pure joy of painting outside? They're fantastic.
Your Brush: Keep It Simple
You do not need ten brushes. You need one or two good ones.
For urban sketching, a waterbrush is almost non-negotiable. A waterbrush has a barrel that holds water so you don't need a separate water jar. You squeeze it gently to release water into the bristles. It's a game-changer for painting anywhere without a table.
The Pentel Aquash is a reliable workhorse and easy to find. The Kuretake Bimoji is a step up in quality and gives a lovely flexible tip that's great for expressive lines and washes. Either one paired with your Peerless DryColor Sheets and you genuinely don't need anything else to get started.
If you also want a traditional brush, a size 8 round with a good point handles most situations beautifully. But for on-the-go sketching, the waterbrush is really the move.
The Rest of Your Kit
Once you've got your core four sorted (sketchbook, pen, paint, brush), everything else is optional. But here are the extras that are actually worth it:
A small piece of scrap paper or an index card is useful for testing your colors before you commit them to your page. It takes up zero space and saves a lot of "oops, that was way too dark" moments.
Binder clips are useful for keeping your sketchbook open flat in a breeze, or clipping extra paper to your cover for reference.
A kneaded eraser takes up no room at all and is useful if you're underdrawing in pencil.
That's honestly it. The artists who have the most fun on location are the ones traveling light, not the ones hauling a rolling supply cart.
A Sample Urban Sketching Kit (That Fits in a Tote Bag)
Here's what a simple, genuinely portable urban sketching kit looks like:
A5 watercolor sketchbook, Sakura Pigma Micron pens in 0.3 and 0.5, Nicholson's Peerless Sidekick palette (45 colors, checkbook size), a Waterbrush set, and a kneaded eraser. That's it. The whole thing fits in a small tote bag alongside your keys and your phone.
This setup lets you go from "sitting down at a cafe" to "actively painting" in under 60 seconds. No setup ritual, no worrying about spills, no waiting for paint to activate. Just paint.
FAQ: Urban Sketching Watercolor Kit Questions
Do I need expensive watercolors for urban sketching?
Not at all. In fact, the most important thing for urban sketching isn't paint quality, it's paint portability and speed. A highly portable paint like Peerless DryColor Sheets or a compact pan set will serve you much better than expensive tube paints that are hard to travel with.
What's the lightest watercolor setup for urban sketching?
A waterbrush plus a DryColor sheet format like the Peerless Sidekick is about as light as it gets. No water jar, no heavy tin palette, and the Sidekick itself is about the size of a checkbook. You can fit your entire paint supply in a jacket pocket.
Do I need waterproof ink pens for urban sketching?
Yes, if you plan to paint over your lines with watercolor. Non-waterproof ink will bleed and spread when water touches it. Sakura Pigma Micron pens and Platinum Carbon ink are both reliably waterproof.
Can I use a regular watercolor set for urban sketching?
You can, but there are tradeoffs. Pan sets need to be wetted before they give full color saturation. Tube paints are messy to travel with. Neither format is designed specifically for speed and portability the way DryColor sheets are. If you already have a pan set, absolutely use it while you're getting started. But when you're ready to streamline, the DryColor format is worth trying.
How many colors do I need for urban sketching?
Way fewer than you think. Many experienced urban sketchers work with a limited palette of six to twelve colors and mix from there. A wider range is nice to have, but it's not what makes great sketches. Good observation skills and a willingness to just try things will take you much further than 80 colors ever will.
Ready To Paint In The Wild?
The goal of urban sketching isn't to make perfect paintings. It's to show up, pay attention, and capture something real about a moment in time. The supplies just need to stay out of your way while you do that.
If you're looking for a paint format that was practically made for painting on the go, the Peerless Sidekick is a genuinely fun place to start. Forty-five colors, checkbook size, and it works with just a waterbrush and a little bit of curiosity.
Explore The Sidekick at peerlesscolorlabs.com
Bring less. Paint more. You've got this.