What’s Your Ideal Plein Air Setup?

What’s Your Ideal Plein Air Setup?

Because I had so many questions about this, I decided to write a post about my personal setup when painting on the go.

My number 1 rule is keep it as simple as possible. After several years now of hauling my gear around everywhere I go I am serious about bare essentials.

Normally I use an old school half box French easel. This is my right hand man. This is a heavy option but it gives me palette room, can hold large canvases, holds up against the wind, has backpack straps so that I can carry my easel on my back while riding my bike. It also allows my palette to be low while mixing and adjust the canvas height separately, not something to be overlooked for a short person.

The main problem with the half box French easel besides its weight is that it is cumbersome when traveling, especially on airplanes. More than once I have been forced to check it unexpectedly and have spent days afterwards rebuilding the pieces. (another bonus is that it is all wood and with any basic carpentry skills you can fix this easel forever).

This time I ordered myself a new setup and had it delivered to my first U.S. destination in Florida.

I chose to go with the Judson’s Medium French Resistance box and tripod. You can order this box from the “seconds” or blemished products on their website for a substantially lower price and the tripod from Jerry’s or even Amazon. This tripod is ideal for the riveting head which allows you to put the pochade box at any angle you like. I choose to put it completely vertical so that my palette is in the same light as my canvas, making it easier not to have to adjust your color mixtures. This is also because I am short and cannot have the box open at a 90 degree angle, my canvas would either be too low or I would have to reach up to high to mix my paint inside the box.

 

 

You can see that I took out the original bottom of the pochade box and replaced it with a simple piece of wood that I cut to size, sealed with 2 coats of amber shellac for a middle tone and then prepared with linseed oil. The camera mount screws come up into the palette and hold it in place. It is very simple and extremely light and the perfect solution for me on this trip.

 

 

With the removable little metal bar I can also carry a canvas on the back of the closed box for transport before and after painting.

 

 

I hope that I have described my new setup in enough detail to make it easy to understand and try out yourself should you want to have a go with it. Let me know any other modifications that you come up with yourself so that I can try them out too.