January 9, 2024

Coffee Shop Microadventure

If you’ve ever gotten stuck wondering what to pack and what to sketch, here are some ideas to get you started!

By The Art Toolkit Team

A wooden cafe table covered in mugs, art toolkits, sketchbooks and palettes.

Whether you take coffee or herbal tea, visiting a coffee shop is the perfect occasion to sketch! They are are notorious for having small tables, so it’s important to pack light. All you have to do is fill your Art Toolkit with your favorite supplies, and you’re on your way. Here’s a packing list and some subjects to get you started!

What to Bring

• Sketchbook
• Pencil and eraser
• Pen
• Palette of any size: It’s nice not to worry about weight, so whatever you can tuck in a pocket or in your Art Toolkit
• Travel brush + water cup: Water brushes are always great options, too, but most cafés have a restroom where you can dump your dirty water if you like to use travel brushes and portable water cups!
• Towel or rag

Bonus: Anything else you can’t go without, from colored pencils and Washi tape to stamps and a ruler!

A wooden cafe table with a coffee mug and two closed toolkits stacked on the table.

What to Sketch

  1. Your drink: Make a quick sketch while it’s still hot, and fill in the details and color as you sip!

  2. The people around you: Strangers on laptops, reading, chatting; what a great opportunity to practice figures!

  3. Your favorite details: What makes this coffee shop unique? The decorations around the espresso maker? The lights hanging in the windows? The metal conduit running from floor to ceiling?

  4. The whole scene! If you have time and it isn’t too overwhelming, sketch the inside of the café from your vantage point.

A sketch of coffee mugs and a muffin with notes and a blue art toolkit in the background.
A wooden cafe table covered in mugs, art toolkits, sketchbooks and palettes and a person sketching across the table.
open sketchbook and toolkits on a sunlit table with coffee cups
Top row sketches by Nakaia Macomber-Millman.
open sketchbook and toolkit and palette showing lattes on a table.
Bottom row sketches by Cole Morreale.

The silver Pocket Palette pictured above contains: White Gouache and the following Daniel Smith watercolors: Buff Titanium, Yellow Ochre, New Gamboge, Hansa Yellow Light, Phthalo Green, Perylene Green, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Neutral Tint, Quinacridone Rose, Deep Scarlet, Indanthrone Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Cerulean Blue, and Cobalt Teal Blue

The black Pocket Palette pictured above contains Explore Palette Plus colors, plus an assortment of metallic paints by Daniel Smith.

We’re lucky to have a handful of coffee shops in Port Townsend to choose from. These photos were taken at Better Living Through Coffee, across the plaza from the new Art Toolkit shop downtown.

We hope these lists of supplies to pack and subjects to sketch will inspire your next urban sketching microadventure! Cheers!
An artist sites on a rock, dipping a paintbrush in a Pocket Palette.

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