Color Tools for Urban Sketching

Watercolor paints are probably the most traditional medium for field sketching and painting outdoors. Colored pencils are easy to use and portable. Oil painters often prefer to use pastels as they are used in a similar way to oil painting. Urban sketchers also use water soluble colored pencils, markers, oil pastels, crayons, and even colored ball point pens.

Watercolor Paints

Tubes of watercolor paint are versatile for all watercolor paintings. They can be used on larger palettes in the studio, but also placed in portable travel palettes.

Watercolor paints in pans in a travel palette.

Cakes of watercolor paint in pans are usually found in portable travel palettes. These are convenient and made to keep brilliant colors even after drying and rewetting.

Watercolor urban sketch by Karla Beatty, Look Down San Miguel

Look Down San Miguel, by Karla Beatty Sketching first with ink pens and painting watercolor over the top lets urban sketchers work quickly.

Entrance to City Park, by Karla Beatty This was started with a basic sketch in pencil, with watercolors painted over the pencils. Fine pencil marks will "disappear" into the colors.

Watercolor painting by Karla Beatty. Entrance to City Park.

Watercolor field sketching palette, two paint brushes, and small water bottle

This is a folding watercolor field sketching palette. There are two different sized travel brushes. A small leak-proof bottle contains water for painting. You would buy this palette empty and squeeze paints into it from tubes. Put it all together in a travel kit.

Colored pencils are easy to pack up and carry and are often chosen by artists who tend to favor drawing with pencils vs. the paintbrush.
Water soluble colored pencils can be blended with water in brushes to look like watercolor paintings.

colored pencils of many different colors and shades

Artist's quality markers come in a wide variety of colors

Artist's quality markers for drawing and sketching. Easily portable and can fill in wide areas of color quickly. Some, such as the Copic markers, are blendable.

Markers for urban sketching in a small red bag.

This little red bag is a little sketching kit with my preferred three marker colors in warm greys.

Bridge in Portsmouth, by Karla Beatty A quick sketch done with ink lines and Copic markers over the top. I like to use just three shades of grey markers—light, medium, and dark— to get the full range of values in a drawing

Grey markers used in a sketch of the Bridge at Portsmouth by Karla Beatty.

For More Information

Read all about it! Here are links to articles with more information about watercolor painting outdoors:
Painting Outdoors With Watercolor Paints
Pack a Watercolor Travel Sketch Kit