I am drafting my pre-order form for my beautiful new SketchPocket sketching bags, but as I start to write a description of the bag for those who haven’t seen it in the flesh, I lose the run of myself and before too long there is a chance I’ll be sending a Ted Talk to my poor webmaster to put on the pre-order form. Then I don’t know what to do: many of you have been following the progress of the bag with interest, and if it were me, I know I would love to watch the story of a product from concept to creation, especially something that I know will help to make my favourite hobby (or job) easier. So I have decided to tell its story here.
Summer 2022
I realise that none of the sketching bags I have allow me to sketch standing up, because I always have to bend down to reach my pot of water. I have lots of lovely bags designed especially for sketchers on the move, some of which I have bought and some of which have been sent to me by the manufacturer. One of these is terrific, but is not large enough to fit even a small sketchbook: another is useful but doesn’t hold the pens in the right way: a third is far too heavy, even when empty. My favourite of these bags (by Etchr) has accompanied me across Europe on sketching expeditions, during the making of three books and for countless quiet moments in city and country in Ireland. However, not only did I need another bag for my sketchbook, phone and wallet, I couldn’t sketch in a standing position – vital for lots and lots of sketching situations. So I decide to sew my own, and in June I make my first little bag. Result? Well sewn, and very pretty (I follow a YouTube tutorial presented by a beautiful and voluptuous American lady) but too small. As a fabric, I use a cotton canvas covered in my logo that I have had since the pandemic.
I share it with my students and followers online, not because it functions correctly (it doesn’t) but because it is cute as a button and is beautifully made, thanks to the excellent instructions in the YouTube tutorial. The reaction is surprising: people immediately say that if I ever go into production they would love one.
I leave it and don’t think about it for a long time.
Winter 2022
I visit the travel sketchbook festival in Clermont-Ferrand in central France, and at one of the stalls of the art fair I buy a new product from Hahnemühle, the 100% cotton sketchbook with 250g paper. They only have A6 and A4 in stock, and they’re very expensive, but I buy one of each anyway. I use the tiny book to sketch the visitors to the festival, broadcasting it live to my students as I go. It’s super-convenient and the paper is amazing to work on. But – I am not an A6 woman! I am ALL about A5, as evidenced by the line of black A5 spines on my bookshelves. Back in Ireland, I make a few sketches of family over Christmas, because it’s easy and fast. Then the tiny book sits on my shelf and I fill a few A5 sketchbooks as is my wont.
Summer 2023
In June 2023 I pick up the A6 sketchbook again, for some fast captures of the sea on some beautiful days by the shore.
I don’t know why, but on that day, at THAT moment, I suddenly want to sketch in an A6 portrait sketchbook (A5 opened out). So much so, in fact, that I decide to start refining my sketching bags to fit that size specifically. I have lots of experience as a sewer – I have designed dressing-up costumes for my kids, and many clothes over the years – but I am far from professional, and not very precise. I sketch shapes, make patterns out of paper and cardboard, cut, pin and stitch all day every day for a couple of months. By the start of July I am onto version 8 or so. (I lose count!) I now am starting to get serious about designing a bag for the market. I love my design, but it needs tweaking still, and I am very conscious that I am not a professional sewer: my studio looks like an explosion in a pillow factory and even with my brand new sewing machine I struggle with the heavy fabrics. I prick my fingers, get back strain and eye strain and get glue everywhere. I cut things too short, I am not accurate enough with patterns and I long for a young and clear-visioned elf to visit my studio overnight and sew everything for me.
In July ’23, I am teaching in Dunmore East in Co. Waterford. In my hotel room after a day’s teaching one evening I see that there’s a bag out there that is very similar to my design. It’s the same sort of size and has the same sort of art materials inside. My heart sinks. This is a whole team of designers and manufacturers, and they all look young and strong. Then I look more closely and I notice something: in their photos, which are all glorious and glossy, the people using the bags are also young and strong and are generally sitting on moutainsides staring at a magnificent view, sketching it thoughtfully.
“That’s okay then,” I think to myself. “They’re marketing to hipsters. I am making these bags for people who need hip replacements.”
Whilst I consider this to be terribly witty and clever, there’s an element of truth to it: in my life I am not really free to roam the world and sketch whither the whim takes me. It’s more likely to be in a car on a rainy afternoon waiting to pick someone up, or in a café on a Sunday afernoon, or in front of the telly when whatever is showing is not my first choice (might I add that once I brought my SketchPocket to hospital when I was in for a routine procedure. It was on my chest as the gurney was wheeled into theatre.) Sometimes it’s somewhere magnificent that I am visiting, or somewhere local that never fails to move me with its beauty. As I ponder this, I suspect that the real lives of my students and the people who know me and my work aren’t very different from mine, and I start to feel better.
For my summer vacation I visit the Greek island of Crete with my family, and bring two sketchbooks, an A5 and an A6. The current version of the SketchPocket is not big enough, so I sew a bigger one, finishing it the day before we leave for the airport, which is extremely early for me. While the A5 sketchbook I bring never leaves its pocket, the A6 is rarely inside it, and in one week I produce 16 full-colour sketches in the smaller book, while still having a marvellous family holiday and being thoroughly “present”. The bag comes with me down cliff faces, to long lazy lunches, to the beach, into museums and up & down hairpin bends. That’s when I realise that my SketchPocket is really perfect for the job. It even has my passport, phone, sunglasses and wallet in it, and I am truly delighted with myself.
Later that month I meet a wonderful textile and pattern designer from Belfast during one of my workshops in Galway City. Her name is Lorraine. I tell her about my plan to develop the bags, and she gives me the contact details of an industrial designer in Belfast named Stephen.
Autumn – Winter 2023
I thank Lorraine but I also want to work with a factory in Ireland. I find one, but the factory in question tell me they have no slots free until the following January, and that I am to send them a sample and a pattern in the meantime. I find a pattern drafter in north Dublin who breaks down the shapes on her computer screen, and transforms them to a pattern whose bits and pieces fit. The day the CAD image of the bag arrives is emotional, and I feel that this thing might just happen. I send the pattern and the sample to the factory in Dublin, and then I wait. January comes around, and February, and the lovely people in the Dublin factory get busy analysing, cutting, sewing. But by late Autumn ’23 I think it would be prudent to have more than one source of manufacture in case one goes pear-shaped, so by October I have reached out to Stephen, who turns out to be an angel in industrial designer’s clothing. By the time the Irish factory tells me my bag is too complicated for them to produce (fair enough) Stephen and I are well into designing an tweaking the bag. Stephen has designed specialty bags for medical devices and has developed strong relationships with factories in Asia who produce the bags for him. Nothing is too complicated for Stephen, and he never thinks I am being too fussy. He has an interest in sketching himself, so he understands what I am trying to do.
Winter 2023 -Spring 2024
I receive the first sample from the factory. I marvel at the stitching and quality of the workmanship, but the fabric the factory has chosen is pretty meh – there’s no point using expensive fabric for a sample, but still…then an idea occurs to me. My SketchPocket needs to be weather- and waterproof. Should I use…leather? Ten seconds of Googling tells me that it’s not an environmentally friendly way to go, but I certainly don’t want to use PU, which is basically plastic, however nice it might look. Then the words “vegan leather” drift into my mind, and I type in “leather alternatives” into the search bar. Well! Who know you could make leather from mushrooms, coconut, apple, cactus, barley, lemon…? Then there is cork, and wood, and I don’t-know-what-else. I contact the manufacturers of the ones I like, and I see a beautiful vegan leather in my searches. It is exactly the look I want – smooth and shiny and like a jacket I would love to wear. But it’s just a Google Image and I don’t know who has produced the fabric. The only response I get is from a cactus leather manufacturer in Mexico. I liked the mushroom leather too but the website makes it very clear this is only available to swanky designers, by which I think they mean not me. But the cactus leather person is very nice and offers to sell me a sample pack. It arrives, along with a catalogue – so exciting! – and there are a few samples in the little wallet that arrives that I like. Smooth, textured, black, lots to choose from (and some crazy ones that are gold or seafoam…). I arrange for the the first cactus leather sample sent to Asia.
Summer 2024
A sample in cactus leather arrives, and it’s nice – everyone who sees it thinks it’s very fancy and elegant – but it’s not the look I want. It has a texture like expensive leather but it’s not quite as supple and rubbery as I wanted. I send one of the photos of bags that I found online to the cactus leather people and lo and behold, it came from their factory. i am delighted. It feels like a lucky break, and I order a few metres to be sent to the factory for leather sample number two. Each sample also incorporates the changes Stephen and I discuss. I am very conscious that if there are many more delays I will miss the Christmas market, but there’s not much I can do about that.
On one of my podcasts I hear the designer Michael Kors talk about selling bags.
“In New York, where I live, we wear a lot of black,” he says, “so I expect the black bags to be the bigger seller. But the number one selling bag is blush pink. I’m baffled – until my team reminds me that we have a lot of customers in Asia, where it’s hot all the time.”
I think I can do worse than take a leaf out of Michael Kors’ book, and decide that my SketchPockets will come in off-white as well as black. (Speaking of Michael Kors, I discover that he too has decided to make a cactus leather range of bags – but Róisín thought of it first. Just saying.)
Meanwhile I have to do very serious things like engage an IP lawyer and register for VAT. Why oh why do I not have a little tax / intellectual property law elf who comes in overnight and does all that for me? 🙁
Autumn 2024
At long last I am happy with the bag design. It fits an A6 and an A5 sketchbook (but not at the same time, it will be too cramped). I have spaces for beautiful glass vials for ink or water, and I have ordered box loads of 100% cotton sketchbooks by Hahnemühle, as well as the other things I will stock in the bags. I love the jacquard shoulder straps with the name emblazoned on them.
I love these bags. I am proud of them. I carry the black one wherever I go, and I sketch in lots of places I would not sketch in were it not for having my entire kit and caboodle by my side at all times.
After all that…
…here’s the short version of what the bag does and doesn’t do, and does and doesn’t contain.
SketchPocket by Róisín Curé
The SketchPocket is a bag designed for sketchers to be able to sketch in ink and watercolour wherever they are, upright or sitting.
- It fits both an A5 and A6 sketchbook, but not at the same time. The larger pocket fits an A5 sketchbook and the smaller one fits an A6 sketchbook.
- Inside are three rows of elastic, with four slots, for pens and water brushes.
- It has a pocket for a small box of watercolours, up to 12 half-pans.
- There are two elastics in the spine that hold two vials, for water or ink.
- There is a pocket on the outside of the bag, at the back, that fits a passport or a collapsible water container, and has two hidden pockets for bank cards.
- On the front is an extra pocket that fits a phone and a wallet, or phone and sunglasses.
- The bag comes in black or off-white cactus leather.
- It has a matching jacquard shoulder strap with the word SketchPocket woven into it.
- The bag is lined with a cotton canvas, printed in dark green with a pattern of green and white watercolour tubes.
- The zip pulls are embossed with my signature, and the front pocket has an olive-green tab with my signature woven into it.
Options
- Black or off-white
- Full or empty
- Full contains: a set of 12 half pans of Roman Szmal artists’ quality watercolour paints with one extra colour, an A6 sketchbook, 250g 100% Cotton Sketchbook by Hahnemühle, magnetic clips (x2), white gel pen size 10 (Gelly Roll by Sakura), water brushes size Large and Medium (x2) by Sakura, fude fountain pen with converter, sample of Document Brown ink by De Atramentis*, collapsible water container by Hahnemühle, glass vials (x2), one empty, one with ink sample
- Empty contains magnetic clips (X1) and empty glass vials (X1) only
- Optional extras include A6 and A5 200g sketchbooks, tiny boxes of paints**, extra white gel pen size 10 as above
So…you have been very patient. The wait, at least for the pre-order, is nearly over. Delivery will still be in November sometime, all going well. And my Sketch Club members get free shipping unti lthe end of October, so if you were toying with the idea of joining, and are looking forward to one of my bags, then now is the time to sign up.
Here’s a link for the Sketch Club: https://roisincure.com/product/sketchclub/
Keep an eye out for the next newsletter / blog…I look forward to telling you all about the weekend in Dunmore East I have just spent teaching a really lovely group of sketchers.
