Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Van

Equipment and materials for plein air painting when travelling

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.

Tuesday, November 25, 2025