Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Have Paints Will Travel - Part I

Everything that is painted directly and on the spot has always a strength, a power, a vivacity of touch which one cannot recover in the studio... three strokes of a brush in front of nature are worth more than two days of work at the easel.
                                                                                                           ~ Eugene Boudin

A hopeful sign of spring

Despite my resolution to get out and paint in the field this winter, I utterly failed to do so. However, I'm happy to say I've had a bit more success with my other goal; build an inexpensive compact pochade box. As the first day of spring approaches (at least according to the calendar) I'm putting the last finishing touches on my DIY pochade box and getting excited to take it out for a test-drive. Here's how I built my portable easel:





I found this wooden box at a second hand store. The inside of the lid can accommodate up to an 8" x 8" canvas panel, which is more than enough room since I typically work on 5" x 7" or 6" x 6" canvas boards in the field. I had looked into using a cigar box for this project, but the hinges and latches on the cigar boxes I found were very lightweight and would have needed to be replaced. This box had heavy duty hardware, which saved me a step.

I found the scrap wood in the shed, left over from some previous tenant's long-forgotten project.





I glued a strip of the scrap wood between the hinges for the top of the box to rest on while it is open.




Because the bottom of the box is made of fairly thin wood, I glued the bigger piece of scrap wood to the box to make something a little more substantial to bolt the tripod mount to.




To protect my tendonitis-prone wrist, my thoughtful husband stepped in at this point to drill through the bottom of the box and the piece of scrap wood and then attach the tripod mount to the box with a bolt. Now the whole box can be attached to a tripod, and my wrist is uninjured and ready to do some painting.

I'm so thrilled to see this looking like the perfect little pochade box for me, but I can't get out and paint yet. I still have all the inside details to complete. In Have Paints, Will Travel - Part II, I'll show you why I had to drink 4 bottles of wine in order to finish this project.


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