Pentel Creator Collective Featured Creator: Erin McGuire – Landscape & Urban Sketching Pro Kit

Hello! My name is Erin McGuire, and I’m a children’s book author/illustrator, educator, and the curator of the Pentel Arts Landscape and Urban Sketching Pro Kit!

Over the past eighteen years, I’ve illustrated numerous books for young readers, and worked on a huge range of creative projects. I am also an art professor, and one of my most popular classes is my Travel Sketchbook class, where I show students my tips for drawing on location, and encourage them to find inspiration all around them.

Keeping a sketchbook is an important part of my creative practice, and I’ve kept one since I was in high school. My interest in landscape painting started over a decade ago, when I traveled to Iceland for an artist residency. I loved drawing and painting the dramatic mountainsides, the unique rock formations, and the picturesque farmhouses. Nature and travel are endlessly inspiring to me, and I’ve since traveled to Viking turf houses, Templar castles, Roman ruins, and even the base of a volcano or two in search of exciting new material.

As I traveled more, my sketchbook became a place to record my memories in a way that photos never could. Drawing forces you to really study the interesting details of the world, and makes you pay attention to things you might otherwise overlook. I also love the way that sketching can transform even the most mundane subject into an interesting vignette or memory.

Drawing from life is one of the best ways to improve your art, learn a variety of drawing techniques, and find inspiration from nature. But traveling with a lot of art supplies can be challenging. For the Landscape and Urban Sketching ProKit, I picked products that would work well together, offer a range of techniques, and offered some unexpected approaches to travel sketching. While tools like the GraphGear Pencil, Clic Eraser, and Pointliner are great for fine details, the selected Color Brushes and Milky Brush Pens are great for blocking in larger shapes and taking a more painterly approach. Along with the Watercolor Pencils and Aquash, it’s possible to draw a wide variety of subjects without lugging around a whole studio’s worth of art supplies.

I’ve noticed that many artists want to paint with watercolor when they travel, but waiting for the washes to dry takes too much time. Instead, I suggest Watercolor Pencils! With Pentel’s Watercolor Pencils and an Aquash water brush, sketches can quickly turn into sketchbook paintings. I like to sketch my subject in watercolor pencil, then soften the shapes with the water brush, and even add in some shadows with the Sepia Color Brush.

Landscape painting is one of the best ways to study light, and drawing on toned paper is a fun way to draw both the shadow areas and light areas of a subject. I discovered that on a warm toned paper, using only white and blue Milky Brush Pens, I could block in the sky for quick painted sketches. I use the Color Brush pens to complete the drawing and shadows, and then “paint the light” using the Milky Brush pens.

The rest of the tools in the ProKit allow you to create pencil drawings, ink drawings, or other mixed media paintings. I hope you feel empowered to bring these fantastic tools with you on your next trip, even if it’s just to a coffee shop.

My last tip? If you feel a little shy about drawing by yourself, bring an extra sketchbook and ask a friend to draw with you. I love seeing how other artists see the world, and it’s the perfect relaxing hobby to share.

Happy Sketching!