A working ink kit for under €60, weighed and priced
This is the kit I hand to someone who has never carried drawing gear outdoors, priced at what I actually paid in Porto in the summer, weighed on a kitchen scale, and with the two items I would now leave at home named rather than quietly omitted.
Place card — Ribeira quay wall, Porto
| Kind | Field kit |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 41.1420, -8.6110 |
| Country | Portugal |
| Medium | Ink |
| minutes on site | 45 min |
| Tools in the bag | Sakura Pigma Micron 05 · Sakura Pigma Micron 025 · Stillman & Birn Alpha A5 · Muji 0.5 mechanical pencil · PVC eraser · 15 cm steel ruler · A4 greyboard · 3M masking tape |
| First published | 28 Aug 2026 |
The whole list, with weights and prices
Everything below fits in a 2.5 litre sling bag with room for a water bottle. Prices are what I paid in Porto in July and August, in euros, including the local 23% VAT and excluding any shipping.
| Item | Price | Weight | Why it is here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stillman & Birn Alpha A5, softcover | €18.90 | 248 g | 150 gsm, takes ink without bleeding, opens flat |
| Sakura Pigma Micron 05 | €3.30 | 9 g | The workhorse line |
| Sakura Pigma Micron 025 | €3.30 | 8 g | Hatching, tiles, anything below 10 cm |
| Muji 0.5 mechanical pencil | €1.60 | 10 g | Layout only, 2B lead |
| PVC eraser, cut in half | €1.20 | 9 g | Half because a whole one lasts two years |
| 15 cm steel ruler, thin | €2.40 | 21 g | Straight edges for architecture, not for measuring |
| A4 greyboard, 1.5 mm | €3.90 | 148 g | Drawing board, and back cover on windy days |
| 3M masking tape, 24 mm | €4.50 | 62 g | Holds the page on the board, lifts out mistakes |
| Bulldog clip, 25 mm | €0.70 | 12 g | Holds the block open without hands |
| Total | €57.40 | 527 g |
The other 86 grams is the sling bag itself. Total carry: 613 g, which is the number that matters, because a kit you leave at home weighs nothing useful.
The notebook is the one line item worth the money
€18.90 for a notebook sounds like a lot next to €3.30 pens, and it is the item people try to save on. Do not. The cheap alternative — a €6 sketchbook with 90 gsm paper — fails in three specific ways that all cost you the drawing:
- Ink from a 05 nib feathers into the fibres and a 40-minute page becomes a 25-minute page before the lines start merging
- The paper cockles where your hand rests, so the paving you drew as a straight line curves by the bottom of the page
- The binding will not lie flat without being broken, and a book that fights you is a book you stop opening
Alpha at 150 gsm is heavy enough to take a water brush later if you want it, and its surface is just rough enough to hold a pencil line without burnishing it into a grey smear.
The two items I would now drop
The steel ruler. It weighs 21 grams and I have used it twice in four months. A straight edge is useful for exactly one job — long architectural runs like the Ribeira arcade — and on those days you can use the edge of the greyboard, which is already in the bag.
The masking tape. It is the heaviest non-notebook item at 62 grams, and its stated job, holding the page down, is done better by the bulldog clip at 12 grams. Keep a short strip about 10 cm long wrapped around the pencil for emergencies and leave the roll at home. That single change takes the kit to 451 g and drops about €4.
What is deliberately not in here
No water brush, no watercolour, no fountain pen, no stool. Each of those is a real decision rather than an oversight. Water means a container, a cloth and a surface you have to manage in wind; a fountain pen means a bottle and a risk of a bag-wide ink event; a stool means 900 g and a commitment to stay put. All four are worth adding later, one at a time, once you know which one you actually miss. Adding them all at once is how people end up carrying 3 kg and drawing nothing.
A note on prices: these are July prices in Porto from a shop on Rua de Cedofeita and a stationery chain. The pen prices are stable; the notebook drifts between €17 and €21 depending on where you buy it, and buying it locally costs more than ordering it, which is worth knowing before you plan a resupply around it.