When I was in art school, I would draw the urban things like tall buildings, alleys, tugboats and people in their environment. I guess I was urban sketching before I even knew that 'this was a thing'.

I was drawing less as time went on but when I was living in Scotland, the different look of things made me pick it up again. I also switched to using a ballpoint pen at that time. The pencil in my older sketchbooks was blurring from the gentle smudging of the pages over time. I would have a fine tip for details and a medium tip for larger dark areas. I sketched this way, in red or black, for years.

Eventually, I changed my style a bit since I wanted to add colour. I was digitally painting my sketches but found that it was taking too long. I started to use a couple fountain pens (fine and medium nib) in a similar way to the ballpoints. Instead of crosshatching the shading, I was using watercolour to finish them off. Usually in a normal fill-colour way but sometimes in the same colour - Like red ink with only red paint. If I have time, I prefer to do the painting on location too.

While usually work in a copy-paper-sized book, I also have a tiny book for quick sketches. If there’s no room or time to open up the big book, I’ll use my stealthy mini-book. In that, I use a ballpoint pen that gets used a lot and is now maybe a bit blobby. I think that pen is perfect. While the mini-book is as fast as I can draw, I still usually pack in the detail. You can see those sketches here too.