I love making book covers out of things that otherwise would have ended up in the trash, so I couldn't pass on one of these handmade book-sketchbooks from Arsenik Press. I don't have the time or energy to bind a new sketchbook right now, so I was happy to buy this one because it's still handmade and (importantly) it looks cool.

I love the ridiculousness of 80s book covers: the typography, the painting style, the corny catchphrases, the whole thing. The jacket synopsis is as follows:

Deep beneath the city streets lurks a creature hideous beyond description, powerful beyond imagining, a creature so dangerous that it can destroy its victims by the virulence of its thoughts.

The emanations of its computer-like brain invade every sanctuary, searching for those it would destroy. It is remorseless, cunning and inhuman. The pitiful human weaklings it has chosen as prey shudder with terror and disgust, but there is no escape from the ultimate torture that is far worse than death, unless...

I stole the idea to draw/paint an overview of my current favorite supplies on the first page from Apple Pine. I always struggle with what to put on the first page of a sketchbook, so I like this exercise. There's no pressure to make a masterpiece, and it helps give the sketchbook... context? I guess? My previous big sketchbook was a little more clinical because I was still relearning how to use one, but I'm hoping future books will be a bit more diary-esque.

My current supply rotation includes some stuff that I haven't found the time to talk about yet, so I'll merge that into this post while it's relevant.

I've been using nothing but watercolor crayons as my primary "paint" medium for the past few months. I usually use them in a combination of wet and dry depending on the look I'm going for. I love them because they're portable (I snapped them in half to make them even more portable) and take a lot of friction out of the drawing/painting process. I've also been using my waterbrush a lot more for the same reason.

My current palette is primarily muted winter-y colors to reflect the current state of the vegetation outside. I imagine that will be changing soon, but here's the list for now. (All of them are Caran D'Ache Neocolor IIs except for the last one, which is from the Staedtler Karat Aquarell line.)

• White
• Vermillion
• English Red
• Ochre
• Savanna Yellow
• Light Olive
• Olive
• Olive Brown
• Dark Green
• Light Blue
• Ultramarine
• Periwinkle
• Umber
• Vandycke Brown
• Beige
• Payne's Grey
• Brown (Karat Aquarell)

Do I really need 3 shades of olive? Yes.

For inks, I've narrowed down my kit to 3 "staple" pens. I still rotate other pens in if I want more options (mainly for color), but these pens are almost exclusively used for sketching.

I first wrote about Platinum Carbon Black in August last year, and I'm still on the same cartridge in the same Platinum Preppy. I haven't had any issues with ink flow since I filled the pen, even with relatively long periods of idleness in between, and I don't worry too much about babying the pen because it's so cheap. I drew the entirety of this page with Carbon Black so I could color/paint over it.

I keep meaning to talk about the Esterbrook J, but I keep never getting around to it. I will do that at some point. I got this one from the Colorado Pen Show in October and have been using it practically nonstop ever since. The #9048 nib is one of the "premium" interchangeable nibs available for the J, and it's an excellent soft semi-flex nib that's ridiculously pleasant to draw with. Right now, I have it inked with Montblanc Van Gogh Turquoise. The base color is a moody desaturated green-blue that I love, and it has a lot of depth when you dilute it with water.

The Rubato pocket pen, my most recent acquisition, has been working even better than I hoped for sketching. It's so fun getting to use my favorite nib without worrying about running out of ink! The flow is nice and wet and consistent now that the nib and feed have been broken in. I bought a bottle of Pilot Iroshikuzu Yamaguri secondhand to use with it. I had fun with Yamabudo (magenta) while it lasted, but brown meshes with my palette better. Yamaguri is dark brown with greenish-yellowish undertones, but it separates into pink and purple when you dilute it.

Self-contained, ready to use media has made it significantly harder for me to find excuses not to make art in the limited time that I have right now. I'm also making some progress on not giving a fuck whether something turns out good or not. This book has a lot of pages, so it'll be fun to experiment with it!