Equipment and materials for plein air painting when travelling

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My Moroccan and Spanish kit

I`m aware that I can pick up what I need in Casablanca or Seville so I'm not too bothered if I forget anything. 

I usually check where any art shops are before I set out.

Easel

This is a cheap Chinese easel. It is light and fine for sizes up to about A3, unless you are painting on a very heavy board. 

The plastic fittings on these snap and eventually the rubber shoes will loosen, fall off and get lost. But none of this really matters. Costing about £15, you are less likely to worry about it gettting stolen and, being simple, it is easy to fix any issues with a bullog clip or bit of wire, or whatever you can find.

I would caution against travel painting with costly equipment, baggage or clothes. Fancy stuff will make you a little nervous and you are more likely to become a target. Nice clothes get smudged with paint and then you have to fuss around cleaning them.

 I`ve never been robbed when travel painting, which I attribute to luck, a certain caution about where to paint, and not having anything worth stealing anyway. The latter is really the key, as when you have little of marketable value you go around with a certain basic confidence.

Boards

A variety of boards allowing for a variety of approaches.

I set out on these trips with certain ideas of what sort of work I will do, but then changes my mind along the way. That's part of the fun, surely?

Carrier and clips

The clips prevent a wet picture from touching the lid of the carrier.

The clips have coloured tags so that when they fall on some patch of long grass (as they will, inevitably) you can find them.

Paintbox, paints

Paints stored in a B & Q storage box. There are lovely wooden boxes on the market. These look great but are heavy and will crack if you drop them. They are the sort of things which are bought as retirement presents, I suppose-  later to appear on Ebay in mint condition.

My basic set of colours

I'm not religious about these, and my set is more or less the same dozen odd that most plein air artists would recommend. I use Winsor and Newton Artists paints. They have a good consistency, with lovely flow and density. Moreover, I am used to them.

Cerulean blue

Cobalt blue

Prussian blue

Ultramarine blue

Cadmium yellow

Naples yellow

Yellow ochre

Windsor yellow deep

Cadmium red

Cadmium orange

Alzarin crimson

Cadmium green

Burnt umber

Burnt Sienna

Titanium white

Mars black

Liquin 

This is a dependable drying agent and speeds up the surface drying of paint to as little as 24 hours (depending on paint thickness and pigment an any other mediums mixed in, obviously).

Linseed oil

An oil used to increase the fuidity of paints.

Paper palettes, corrugated ard palette holder and linseed oil dipper

The dipper is at the bottom left of the picture and has a metal lid. This gets oily and becomes difficult to remove. Ah well!

The pieces of corrugated card are used to carry the palettes around. The card palettes are cut from old

cereal boxes.

Brushes

Many and cheap. You probably won't be able clean brushes as thoroughly as you`d like to, and frankly I have found little rewad in spending masses on brushes for oil painting. 

Cleaning off oil paint is done with basic household soap.

Cloth

Vital for brush cleaning and also wiping paint off the boards. One of those unglamorous pieces of equipment that is most essential. Can be replaced with kitchen roll.

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A bigger picture, a bigger palette

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Carrier and two supports

 

A bigger palette

B i g g e r !

I'm moving up again. I've primed these two cards with acrylic gesso. They are 34 x 32 cm: I hope to use these on my upcoming trip. Usually I paint my carriers, and perhaps I'll do that when I get back.

 

I've been gradually moving up for a couple of years: a bigger size allows more brush stroke variety and a fuller engagement with colour. it's nice to feel able to move around, to breathe.

 

 There are storage issues with unsold paintings, however, and of course transporting big pictures is much harder.

I'm using a bigger palette too.

 

A common mistake among beginners is to use those traditional wooden kidney shaped palettes: these are elegant but they don't allow much space to spread the paints out and mix colours. Additionally there is the constant problem of one colour polluting the rest. And, they are surprisingly heavy.

 

 Instead, I use these pieces of old cards from grocery boxes which I clip to a larger piece of cardboard. The printed sides  don't absorb too much oil- though I can use the unprinted reverses if I want a less liquid paint. I can unclip a card and put a fresh one down if I need a clean area for mixing fresh colour. I can close the larger cardboard and transport it without making a mess- something that is difficult to do with the wooden palettes.

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Pochade carriers: pin

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The carriers get continual adjustments. If the card supports used for painting increase in size they are more prone to buckling, sometimes so much that they touch the covers, causing smudging in the painting.

 

 

Ergo: the addition of a pin. 

Yes, this will mark the surface, but homefully much less and in a more controlled mannner, and will help to hold the picture in position during transportation.  

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Gallery 5595, Portobello, Edinburgh, Exhibition with Jane Rutherford

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The Forest Edge at Gallery 5595, Portobello, Edinburgh

 5595 Gallery A-board

Paintings were taken from frames and passepartouts and fixed directly onto the walls.  This was a considerable improvement on showing work framed as it allows the pictures to "breathe". Of course this is a way of showing work which is impractical in most situations as the painting isn't protected. 

Two paintings were shown in their carriers. The paintings were both sold with the carriers. The carriers arouse considerable curiosity and admiration.

 Five Latin American paintings

 Three Scottish pochades (left) with two of Jane Rutherford`s works

Trees, River Kelvin, Glasgow, in carrier SOLD

Warehouses, Glasgow, with a painting by Jane Rutherford

Paintings from Peru (left and Brazil) both SOLD

Two Peruvian pochades.

That on the right, of the gorge in Chivay is sold  SOLD

A seascape from Oban SOLD

A grove, SOLD

A small pochade from Puno, Peru (lady in a red skirt) SOLD

Write-up- this text was presented on this site in Auguse.

Sales were good and the exhibition was popular, visited by over 800 people over two weekends. 

I received considerable feedback, all positive.

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Thanks to Mark Haddon and Jane Rutherford of Gallery 5595.

 Thanks to Paul Kier for help with hanging this show.

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Pochade carrier with double pochade

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Carrier with double pochade

Two pieces of card support are lightly joined at the back to double. This doubles the surface area. These are clipped into place in a carrier so they can be painted. After the work is finished the two pieces will be separated and each carried home each in its own carrier so they don`t get damaged. They will be joined again later when dry.

If this experiment works I am on to creating much larger pictures when travelling. This will allow for more dramatic effects, variations in scale, tonality and gesture that at the moment are hard to achieve.

The main question is how well the carrier will sit on the paint box and easel set-up. But for every problem there is a solution, surely.

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A new way of keeping pochades in carriers

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wire holder

The pochade support is held in place by:

 a. wires which pass through the perforations in the corrugated card  

 b. blu-tac on the underside of the pochade, sticking it to the carrier (not illustrated)

This new method has a disadvantage, notably that a small area of the pochade where the wires sit is less accessible to the brush and will interfere with painting. However, it is worth experimenting with because in  direct sun the pochade buckles, so that when the carrier is closed the painted surface touches the lid. This is particularly an issue with larger pochades. 

The new method also allows pochades to be removed more easily.

pochade carrier with support

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Gardens, Trindade; Ecuador; carriers

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Gardens, Trindade, Florianopolis, oil on card, 21 x 24 cm unavailable

These larger pochades are less easy to get right as they demand a more sophisticated compositions. 

With this in mind, how many pictures can one reasonably expect to be successful in a week's painting, and therefore how many pochade carriers should I take to Ecuador?

Approximately a third of sessions are successful- the others can optimistically be regarded as "preparatory". So, with two sessions a day and fourteen a week, there will be five good pictures (if I am lucky) at the end of each week....which means I need only take about 15 carriers.

At the end of each week a few carriers can be "liberated" because the pochades inside them will be dry and can be removed.

All this matters as I like to carry as little as necessary when travelling.

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A poem about Britain in thirty pictures

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Thirty pochade carriers for the U.K.

I think of the trip as a poem, the paintings bearing more similarity in their subjective qualities to this than to any topographical survey. A poem about Britain in thirty pictures. Or fewer, as I may ditch some later. The schematic quality of the project is satisfying, but such schematic notions can stultify. It's better to just get on with the work and see if anything good happens. 

 As the trip approaches I regret not giving more time to it, but the UK is an expensive place to travel in, and simply does not represent good value, both food and accommodation being very costly. It is wiser to put the money aside for use in Ecuador next year.

The carriers in their playschool colours when laid out like that are reminiscent of Klee's* Magic Squares. This external character a little different from their sober insides:

Open carrier 

Some of the carriers have been reused many times on different trips and I like the sense that they have a garnered a history. I enjoy repairing them and trying to trying ways to make make them ever more robust containers.

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Like many, I guess, I feel a certain pessimism about the way the UK is going, that the better elements in the society are suppressed and a strange and reckless yet powerful group is determining its future.


* a fine travel-painter

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A visit to northern Peru- conclusions, carriers

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Northern Peru: the complete set of 23

Conclusions

I regard the trip as a success. Given the terrible rains shortly after my departure, I was extremely lucky with the weather, losing only a couple of days. 

And most of the pictures are good. I enjoyed painting in Peru. No-one annoyed me as in North Africa where children throw stones and people are often difficult to deal with. The Peruvians are pleasant and straightforward I find, though their food is extremely eccentric to say the least, their breakfasts especially bizarre.

I shall try to revisit Peru next summer, this time for a little longer- six weeks perhaps. Or would it be good to try to go Ecuador- Peru? That might be more fun, more adventurous.

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Carriers

The carriers served well, except that two paintings were  irreparably damaged. This happened in one of the double carriers and the moral is that the double carriers are not good for transportation for any distance as there is a high chance they get pressed tight and the two pictures with are stuck together- much as did not happen to this work, happily:

Two from Cajabamba:  undamaged

Ergo,  the function of the double carriers is limited to their use on a particular painting excursion. Then, the pictures are best left to dry for about a week after which one of the pictures should be removed and put in a separate container for transportation.

This seems like a lot of hassle but it isn't really. There is never a perfect solution to combining  travel and painting: any system that is perfectly secure for the paintings will inevitably become very cumbersome. 

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My portable palette

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Like the pochade carriers, the palettes close so they can be transported without making a mess.

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Getting ready for Peru

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Carriers. 

All are now double carriers. The double carriers save considerable space but there is always the worry that the pictures on one side will mar that on the opposite.  But on longer trips such as the one coming the pictures can dry superficially between destinations on the itinerary.

Double carrier

I've been quite inactive here. It's too hot to do much except daydream, so I'm very keen to get going.

I'm scoring off the days to Saturday when I fly to Peru. I worry about one thing or another- rain, crime, the general hassle, getting ripped off and so forth, but at worst it will be a break from here. 

Before a departure I always find a surge in anxieties, which often focus around some petty matter- fear of houseplants dying, insects invading the house, the car being damaged etc.

But when I start packing and I have filtered down everything into the little kit I need to do some work and get by for a month I realise that all those anxieties are nothing more than a load of mush. Or perhaps they represent some fear about freedom, as if some part of me doesn`t want to be free to enjoy working and travelling but would prefer me to sit and rot here and moan about things. Is there something in us that prevents us from escape, from leaping to safety, and innate conservatism, so well represented by Billy Liar, unable to take the train to a more joyful life in London, condemned to provincial misery.

Florianopolis is a boring place and nothing happens here without a push and a shove and then another push and a shove on top of that. Socially it is very slow, and there are almost no cultural events. I regret that I didn`t set out to travel just after New Year. I`m always concerned about losing students by travelling for too long. But it is so slow for students in January that I could surely have gone without anyone noticing and I`m cross with myself for not having done so.

Ready to go.

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Two paintings from Joaquina

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 Carrier featuring two paintings from Joaquina, October, 2016

 Joaquina I, October, 2016, oil on card, 13.5 x 12 cm   available

 Joaquina II, October, 2016, oil on card, 11 x 13 cm   AVAILABLE

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Rio Tavares, meadowland

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Rio Tavares, meadowland, oil on card, 11 x 15.5 cm - available

An underappreciated aspect of painting is surface: especially the surfaces of supports- canvases, card, wood, glass or aluminium, each of which bring specific qualities and meanings to a painting. I paint on card which is primed first with linseed oil-heavy paint, then coated with a lighter later of thinned paint which dries with a brittle surface that ensures a good tooth.

I will re-use these cards when the pictures painted on them are unsatisfactory, and the process of re-priming them lends them distinctive qualities. These qualities affect enormously the final piece: they are the point of departure. Some of the cards are brilliant white- good for very bright sunny days, Others are slightly toned down with various greys, light ochres and yellows. 

One can, of course, cover the whole card at the outset of a picture, and, Renaissance-style, construct picture from layers, thereby obliterating and sense of the underlying surface.  But I think more fun is to use the  particular texture and colour of  a card as a compositional element in itself- much as Chinese,watercolourists, and woodcut printmakers do with paper.

A double carrier with two card supports. 

They are glued to masking tape. 
To remove card simply pull the masking tape tags. 

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A visit to southern Peru: Puno; part three, down by the market

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Puno, red car, woman, oil on card, 15 x 16.5 cm  SOLD

Puno, a lady in a red skirt, oil on card, 14 x 12 cm  SOLD

This picture above, above, is one of the best from this trip. It convey's the rugged feel of the place well in the roughness of technique.

Puno, late afternoon, oil on card, 16 x 18 cm - available

I continued this way: a cross between impressionism, and art brut approach (not so much a choice as an instinct) working rapidly and directly. It has something to do with saying- these are the limits of my capacity to know, I can only see so much now, let me not pretend.

 The places depicted here are in some senses ugly, unfinished, in other senses they are places with potential, rudely muscular like many young places in Latin America,

Puno, people going about their business, oil on card, 13 x 14 cm  AVAILABLE

The last four pictures revive the sense of stimmung, the concept of  which de Chirico writes about eloquently with reference to Nietszche, and seeks to introduce into his own work. He describes(from The Memoirs og Giorgio de Chirico,  translated by Margaret Crosland, Da Capo Press, 1994):

 ...a strange and profound poestry, infinately mysterious and solitary...this extraordinary sensation can be found (but it is necessary, naturally, to have the good fortune to posess my exceptional faculties) uin Italian cities  and in Mediterranean cities like Genoa or Nice; but the Italian city par excellence where this phenomenan appears is Turin.

Does the  clear light of the Andes which resembles that of de Chirico`s Turin?

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These streets contain many incidents, and suggest the possibility of incident. They are market streets but given my aversion to people watching me while I worked, I painted the less busy streets.

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A double carrier

The double carriers worked reasonably well. There were difficulties with one: the cases have to allow for the fact that in hot weather the card supports start to buckle in the sun and take up three or four times the depth than otherwise, so it is best to compensate for this with fairly deep case frames.

 I used glue rather than blu-tac to hold the pictures. It seems more secure than the blu-tac. The pictures can be removed from the carriers fairly easily. 

These carriers allow me to take considerably more pictures home with me, and therefore open the possibility of longer trips? thus Ecuador, in January, might well be a whole month.

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Double carrier

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This is the new style double carrier which I shall use for Peru, in an attempt to reduce the space taken up by pochades in my luggage. Hopefully, the paintings do not touch, even if the luggage is chucked about by baggage handling staff at the airports.

 But..."We shall see"...said Big Max.*



* a line which comes from Big Max by Kin Platt.

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Getting ready for New York

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Pochade carriers ready to be packed,

TED talks are often repellent and in this, below, as usual, the tone is relentlessly self-congratulatory. The American positivity is nauseating. But I found it interesting nonetheless to understand more about zoning and the development of urban leisure spaces in New York.

https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_burden_how_public_spaces_make_cities_work?language=en#t-311820

The pity is that these modern spaces are over-designed. They are too clean and much too unambiguous to invite rich speculations. Being in them is like being in a computer simulation, a sort of Truman Show.

This is a feeling which predominates through much modern design. Idiosyncrasies and historical accidents are removed and what are left are the smooth  surfaces of hotel atriums. Times Square in the fifies has a sort of messy vigour, and looks like New York ought to look: the modern version resembles a pedestrianized street in a provincial Germans city; and has the strange absent character of the faces of those elderly people whose faces have been surgically "improved". There is something missing with the wrinkles and lines- experience.

 I want yellow cabs and bums and squalor and broken stuff as much as I want new. Broken things are interesting and it shows that people are relating to their environment in some way. Modern design is sterile. And I really don't care if Macy's gets more customers.

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And here is my calendar. six days to go:

Well here we  are. Scoring off the days.

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