Size of paper for sketches

hey guys

this year will be the first year ill be taking a portfolio and paper to collect sketches and im trying to decide on A3 or A4 for the paper i shall take

i was wondering what you guys take and if theres a prefered paper size by the artists themselves

When it comes down to paper size, it depends. Some artists do not care at all. With some they find A3 a bit large. Most guys use a format between A4 and A3. The thing with large paper is also: if you are lucky you get a bigger sketch. However, if the artist sketches always in the same size you have a skecth which looks a bit lost on A3 with all that white space around it. Personally I always hate to stand in line behind someone with huge portfolios.

There are a number of moving parts here but I've seen sketches on everything from business cards up to A3 paper.

It comes down to a number of different questions -

1) What are you willing to carry?? - an A4 book fits into a carrier bag while A3 really needs an artist portfolio case to keep things flat

2) What are you willing to pay?? - the more ink you ask an artist to use the more they may charge you. I can think of one artist who goes £10 for A4 and you get a head shot but it's £25 for A3 and you get a full body shot with lots of detail - both are worth the money for the effort he puts in, but what are you looking for.

Which leads to perhaps the biggest question …

3) What do you want a sketch of?? - does the character work as head shot alone or do you need to see a full costume. I have a personal view on this as I like to collect my sketches in themes.



A real alternate is to use one A3 page and get lots of different artists to work on it i.e. if you like the X-men why not get each artist to draw a member filling the page up or perhaps you'd like an art "jam" by everyone you can get - there are a number of examples over on www.comicartfans.com

I have a sketch book that i take with me and its about A4.
Its a pretty decent size

thank you for your advice guys =)

its all realy usefull info

i think il go with A4 and get some realy nice paper and a protective follio

i realy like the idea of a a3 super team, i would love to see that with the JSA and JLA or avengers all the individual characters done by the different artists =)
thats something that i would have framed, but i think thats something ill do after collecting some individual sketches

thanks guys