How to Keep a Pocket Sketchbook: Build the Habit and Choose Your Kit

A drawer’s best tool is the one in the pocket when something interesting happens. A pocket sketchbook lowers the cost of starting to nearly nothing: no desk, no bag, no setup, just a few lines made in the minutes that would otherwise go on a phone. Articles on this site about drawing London and about free galleries both assume you have such a book to hand. This one explains how to choose it, fill it and keep going.

Choosing the book

Size is the first decision, and it matters more than paper. A pocket sketchbook should fit inside a coat or jacket pocket without bulging, which usually means a page of about A6 or smaller. Anything larger turns into luggage, and luggage is left behind. A hard cover is worth having, since it gives you something to rest on when standing at a bus stop or leaning against a wall.

Look for a stitched or sewn binding if you can, because a book that opens flat is easier to draw across both pages, and a glued spine tends to crack after a month in a pocket. Paper does not need to be fancy. A plain, lightly toothed sheet takes pencil, ballpoint and fineliner well. Very smooth paper smudges more, and very thin paper shows the drawing from the other side.

A cheap book has an advantage that is easy to overlook: you feel free to ruin a page. People who buy an expensive notebook often keep it blank for a year, afraid of spoiling it. If that sounds familiar, buy a second, cheaper one to use first.

Pocket sketchbook sizes in millimetres

UK paper sizes follow the ISO 216 A-series, in which each size has half the area of the one above it. A5 is 148 x 210 mm, A6 is 105 x 148 mm and A7 is 74 x 105 mm. Many books sold as pocket size do not follow the A-series at all. Moleskine’s pocket sketchbook is 9 x 14 cm, and Stillman & Birn makes pocket books of 89 x 140 mm. That format is narrower than A6, and the missing 15 mm of width is what lets it slide into the inside pocket of a jacket.

Format	Page size	Where it goes	Good for
A5	148 x 210 mm	A bag or a large coat pocket	Seated gallery studies, longer drawings
A6	105 x 148 mm	A coat pocket	An all-round daily book
Pocket	About 90 x 140 mm	An inside jacket pocket	Quick figures on the move
A7	74 x 105 mm	A shirt or trouser pocket	Thumbnails and visual notes

For a first sketchbook, A6 or the 90 x 140 mm pocket format is the safe choice. A standing figure can fill the page, and the book never needs a bag. A5 has twice the area of A6, so a two-page spread takes twice as long to fill. That is fine for someone who already draws at home, but it can stall a habit that is only a few weeks old.

Paper weight in gsm, and what it means

Paper weight is given in grams per square metre, written gsm or g/m². A higher number usually means a thicker, stiffer sheet. A plain writing notebook such as the Leuchtturm1917 Pocket uses 80 g/m² paper, which is fine for a pencil sketch but a dense fineliner drawing can show through from the back. The small sketchbooks in the table below run from 100 to 165 gsm. Paper for wet media is heavier again: Moleskine uses 165 g/m² in its sketchbook and 200 g/m² in its watercolour notebook.

Book	Page size	Paper	Binding
Daler-Rowney Simply, hardback	Portrait, 54 sheets	100 gsm, soft white, medium grain	Hardbound, perfect (glued) binding
Seawhite black cloth hardback, A6	A6 portrait, 92 pages (46 sheets)	140 gsm all-media cartridge	Sewn, cloth-covered boards
Stillman & Birn Alpha, softcover	89 x 140 mm (3.5 x 5.5 in)	150 gsm, white, medium grain	Soft cover
Moleskine Art Sketchbook, Pocket	90 x 140 mm	165 gsm, ivory, acid-free	Hard cover, opens flat to 180°
Leuchtturm1917 Notebook, Pocket (for comparison)	90 x 150 mm	80 g/m² writing paper	Thread-bound, opens flat

The figures come from the makers’ product pages and UK stockists’ listings as published in November 2026. Ranges change, so check the current listing before buying. Stillman & Birn describes its Alpha paper as suited to dry media, ink and light washes.

Binding types

Four bindings turn up in small books. Sewn or thread-bound books open flat, so a drawing can run across the gutter, and both Leuchtturm1917 and Moleskine say theirs lie flat. Stapled cahiers, such as Seawhite’s 40-page Art Cahier, are thin and cheap enough to fill in a month and file away. Wirebound books with a double coil fold back on themselves, which helps when standing, but the coil snags on a pocket lining. Glued spines are the cheapest option and usually the first to crack.

The small kit that goes with it

The best kit is short. You will carry it every day, so every item has to earn a place. A workable set looks like this:

• one soft pencil, plus a spare, in a short length or a clutch type
• a black fineliner or ballpoint for when you want a bolder mark
• a small eraser, though many drawers learn to leave it out
• a clip or elastic band that holds the pages shut

That is all. The urge to carry watercolours, markers and a ruler for every occasion is a common way to make the habit heavy and then drop it. If you want colour, add a single water brush or one pale marker later, and only once you are drawing most days.

Keep the pencil attached to the book. A loop or a rubber band across the cover prevents the most common reason for not drawing, which is searching the bag for something to draw with. The same goes for the spare: a second pencil in a different pocket means a broken tip never stops a session.

Pencil grades

Graphite pencils are graded from hard H to soft B, with HB in the middle and F between HB and H. Staedtler’s Mars Lumograph range has 24 grades, from 12B at the soft end to 10H at the hard end. A pocket book needs only a narrow slice of that. HB suits light construction lines, 2B makes a good everyday drawing pencil, and a 4B or 6B gives quick darks. Grades of 2H and harder leave a pale line that is hard to see outdoors and can dent thin paper.

Soft leads are also thicker. Staedtler gives a lead diameter of about 2.0 mm for every grade from 2B to 10H, about 2.5 mm for 3B to 5B and about 3.6 mm for 6B to 11B. A thick soft lead blunts quickly and leaves graphite on the facing page, so a 6B is better kept short and capped.

Pens and ink

A ballpoint is the most forgiving pen to carry, since it has no nib to dry out and makes a line that can be pressed lightly or hard. A pigment-ink fineliner gives a steadier black. Sakura states that the ink in its Pigma Micron pens will not bleed or run if liquid touches the page after the ink has dried. That matters as soon as you add a water brush, because a wash over a waterproof line leaves the drawing intact. Test any pen on the back page of a new book before relying on it, as some papers take ink better than others. For drawing events and longer days out, the kit in the reportage drawing guide adds a brush pen, a clipboard and a folding stool.

Building the habit

The kit is the easy part; the habit is where most books are lost. Drawing has to compete with the phone, and it usually loses unless it has a fixed place in the day. The reliable method is to tie it to something that already happens: the first coffee, the train, the lunch break, or the minute you wait for a kettle.

Start with a target so small that failing it seems silly. One drawing a day, lasting no more than five minutes, is plenty. A full page is optional. A single object or a few quick lines of a person counts. Date every page, since a dated sequence is satisfying to flip through and shows how your hand changes over weeks.

What to draw

Beginners often stall because they cannot decide on a subject. The answer is to draw what is nearest and cheapest to find: a cup, a shoe, your own hand, the person opposite you on the bus. Everyday objects stay still, and people on public transport rarely notice a drawer who works quickly. Variety helps over time, but at the start any subject is better than waiting for a good one.

A few sketchbook ideas for beginners that suit a small page: draw each meal before eating it, draw the same window at the same hour for a week, or fill a page with the chairs in one cafe. On the Tube, shoes and bags hold still far longer than faces. A page of nothing but hands, your own included, teaches more about proportion than a whole figure drawn badly.

Practise short timed studies. Give yourself one minute for a gesture, three for a simple object and ten for something more complex. Time limits remove the chance to fuss and force you to decide what matters. If you want to practise the human figure with a model, the guide to life drawing sessions in London explains what a class looks like, and the pocket book is a natural place to keep your notes from it.

Using the book in public

Drawing in public is less awkward than it feels. Most people are absorbed in their own business, and a person with a small notebook looks like someone writing. Choose a spot with a back to a wall, so nobody stands behind you, and keep the book low and close. If someone asks what you are doing, a brief friendly answer is enough.

Museums and galleries are good places for a first public session because sketching is common there. The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern is a good example: free to enter, sheltered and never empty. Rules differ by venue, and the usual allowance is pencil in a small pad, which suits a pocket sketchbook exactly. Check the visitor page before you go. The kit described above sits comfortably within most policies.

Dealing with pages you dislike

Every sketchbook has weak pages, and most of them are the most useful ones. A bad drawing shows what you tried and where it broke. Resist the urge to tear pages out or to redraw them neatly. Instead, write the date, the place and a few words if you like, then turn the page.

If a drawing frustrates you, ask what went wrong in a single sentence: proportions off, line too timid, ran out of time. That sentence becomes the aim of the next sketch. Over a few months, patterns appear in what you note, and they point to what to practise.

When the pocket sketchbook is full

A finished book is worth keeping, even if it looks scruffy. Write the start and end dates on the cover and shelve it. Many drawers return to old books for ideas and are surprised by how much they have changed. Then buy the next one and start again, perhaps a little smaller or a little looser than before.

Leave the next blank book near the door tonight with a pencil beside it, and draw the first thing you see tomorrow.