34. Beach Sketches & Building Better Habits
Beach sketches, portable palettes, and refocusing on daily visual journaling
Happy Friday everyone!
Another week has flown by! I hope you've all been finding time to put pen to paper and capture the world around you. I've got some exciting updates to share about my recent beach adventure and a new challenge I'm diving into.
Saturday Beach Sketching Adventures
This past Saturday had beautiful sunny weather, so a beach day with the family was in order. We loaded up the car with packed lunch, plenty of water, suncream, swimming stuff, towels, SUP board, picnic blanket and chairs… and I packed my trusty A6 sketchbook plus my Lihit Lab revised sketch kit from Cornwall and headed to the beach to meet my sister,
and her lovely family.The first sketch I tackled was a beach scene where I experimented with watercolour pencils to capture the bright colours of everything. The watercolour pencils gave me just enough colour to bring the sketch to life without overcomplicating things.
Next, I turned my attention to the pretty cottages that line the hill across the road from the beach. For these, I kept it simple with my Pitt oil pencil, focusing on keeping it loose, and not worrying about capturing their charming character perfectly.
But my favourite part of the day was sketching the beach-goers with my fountain pen, capturing quick studies of people sunbathing and chatting. Here's a little secret I've discovered from my beach sketching experiences recently:
sketching people at the beach is absolute gold for practice! They're generally so relaxed and absorbed in their own activities that they don't notice you drawing them. Plus, they tend to stay in position longer than people in most other settings. If someone does move, you can simply switch to sketching another person nearby, then come back to your original subject when they settle back into their spot.
Of course, I also took plenty of photos - especially of my boys on the SUP and other family moments. This is something I really recommend: even when you're sketching on location, don't forget to capture reference photos for later. It means you can stay present with your family while still gathering material for future sketching sessions back home. Here is a super quick sketch I did the next day at home.
New Project: The Perfect Pocket Palette Setup
Speaking of being prepared for sketching adventures, I'm working on something I'm really excited to share with you over the coming weeks. I'm putting together what I hope will be my ultimate portable sketching kit for summer family days out (I do so love curating sketch kits!).
The star of this setup is an Art Toolkit pocket art tool kit case that I'm using to house a pocket palette demi, a fountain pen, and overly obsessed over carefully curated selection of other essential supplies. My goal is to create a go-to travel sketch kit that's compact enough not to be a burden but complete enough to handle whatever sketching opportunities arise.
I intend to document the process of setting this up and testing it in real-world scenarios. I am recording videos on YouTube showing how I organise everything, what supplies I will be including, and how it performs during actual sketching sessions. I'm particularly interested in finding the sweet spot between having enough tools to feel confident and keeping the kit light enough that I'll actually be able to carry it everywhere.
I've just shared the first episode on YouTube showing the initial setup and my thoughts on what might work – it's a quick watch that sets up the whole series, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the kit I'm putting together!
While I'm working on this kit, I've been thinking about how overwhelming it can be setting up watercolour palettes for the first time. The secret isn't having dozens of colours - it's understanding warm and cool versions of your primaries. I'm planning on putting together a detailed guide on this whole process, which I'll be sharing soon!
Exploring my Daily Sketch Habit
Something I've been thinking about a lot lately - while I sketch regularly, I realise I'm not always capturing what I'm actually doing and experiencing day-to-day. Days, weeks and months have a way of slipping by in a blur, and I find myself wishing I had a better visual record of this chapter of my life.
So I'm starting an experiment – creating my own Daily Sketch Habit. My goal is to capture at least one moment from each day through a quick sketch, whether it's the my morning coffee mug, the kids' shoes scattered by the back door, or views from my bike rides and walks. Ordinary moments often make the most meaningful sketches, especially stacked up over a period of time in your sketchbook.
Let’s see how this Daily Sketch Habit evolves, and whether I can sustain it. Will I prefer morning sketches or evening reflections? What subjects will I gravitate toward? Will documenting daily life this way change how I see my surroundings?
I am excited that this could be the beginning of something bigger – maybe by documenting this, I could create a structured approach to help others build this habit too. I'm imagining guides, challenges, maybe even digital tools to help make daily sketching more accessible and sustainable for busy creatives.
I'd love to hear from you about this! Do any of you keep a daily sketch journal? What strategies have you found helpful for maintaining that daily practice? Have you discovered any tricks for making sure you actually capture something from each day, even when life gets busy?
Until Next Time...
Thank you for reading my weekly newsletter. Next week I will be back with an update on my daily sketching habit, the pocket palette set up and swatching, and whatever else the week might bring!
P.S. If you're enjoying these newsletters and finding them helpful or inspiring, I'd be so grateful if you shared them with a friend who might enjoy reading them too.
Emma x
That’s such a sweet little pocket palette! Look forward to your series ☺️ I’m really enjoying capturing my day visually - I don’t always manage to sit down every day to do it so catching up using the odd photos I’ve taken is really useful x
Love your drawings! full of character!
I do daily sketch of my cat - sometimes a few at once, or just a quick pencil drawing and add color later. I post one sketch on Substack with a snippet, which keeps me accountable. The warm feedback keeps me going, and writing the snippet helps me reflect on the story behind each sketch.