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. The paper in this book is Fabriano 1264 watercolor paper.

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. I've also made several changes to my tools lately, so let's talk about them.

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
• Sahara Yellow
• Light Olive
• Olive
• Olive Brown
• Dark Green
• Turquoise Blue
• Ultramarine
• Periwinkle
• Umber
• Vandycke Brown
• Beige
• Payne's Grey
• Brown (Karat Aquarell)

Do I really need 3 shades of olive? Yes.

I've pared my pens down to 3 staples. 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 a semi-flex nib. 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 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!