As a sort of late Spring-clean I’ve updated various bits of the blog for your perusal and enjoyment. Most of it’s kit related, but this seems to be the most popular content!
‘Daily sketch-kit’ – now includes a couple of my bent-nib fude pens. I’ll do a full post on these soon; there’s much fun to be had with variable line width, and many types/brands/nib-angles to navigate. Here’s Parka Blogs comparison of some of the more popular models to whet your appetite.
‘Current inspiration’ – looks at A Chinese Life, full of wonderful high contrast black and white ink-brush drawings.
‘Paint’ – includes the opaque watercolours I’ve added to my palette (instead of gouache, which I never warmed to) for sketches on toned paper.
Palettes – now has instructions on how I made the latest of many models; it’s lighter than ever, with more and deeper mixing wells and extra opaque colours and won’t be coming to a shop near you soon, so have a go at making one and bespoke it to your hearts content!
Sketchbooks and paper – has instructions for the plywood-covered completely fold-backable sketchbooks, and concertina books. And I’ve removed a couple of book-binding links that had died.
Bamboo dip-pen – has links to nib-improvement and multi-coloured ink-pots.
I’ll probably update the ‘Useful Books’ section next, but let me know if there are other bits that seem a bit dated or if there’s any useful information that you’d like me to add to the blog. Thanks
Mostly drawing 
Many thanks for posting all of this. Always fascinating for a”kit geek”like me. I will have a go at some of it.
Have fun and let me know how you get on, you’re bound to find further improvements to be made…
Ed, This is a very refreshing post. It lead me on a trip around your blog again and I’m glad you posted this. I especially liked the pages from “A Chinese Life” and am looking at asking for a “Hokusai Manga” book for my upcoming birthday … but have I got the time and room for yet another book?
Thanks, chats with you reminded me why I started blogging anyway, sharing enthusiasms and approaches. For the Hokusai Manga I did finally crumble in the face of book greed and joined Amazon japan so I could order the complete manga… No need, the 700 page PIE edition is plenty! And much much (much) cheaper.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hokusai-Manga-PIE-Books/dp/4756240690/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420401628&sr=8-1&keywords=hokusai+manga
Many many fine faces and highly animated and expressive figures to learn from. I’m sure you can find space and time for this one…
Great updates — your hacks especially! Glad you leave the old kits shown on the page when you update — it’s interesting to see how the kit evolves over time, becoming more and more uniquely yours. I find that mine gets simpler over time in some ways (I start to refine my favorite media instead of carrying everything), but also more specialized in other ways (getting pickier about specific tools; nothing generic will do).
– Tina
Thanks Tina. Yes, well observed, the process of simplification seems to run alongside specialisation! I am officially a ‘high maintenance’ sketcher…