Atelierartisanal's Blog

After creating a pochade box for my studio in Belgium, I wanted to create a similar one for my studio in California. While attending a course called “preparation for landscape painting” at the Watt Atelier, I picked up a few tips and tricks.

Primarily, they suggested sourcing a good glass 9 x 12″ palette with a while underside. Important! Since my previous palettes had been wood toned, now I could finally see the colors I was mixing! Size-wise it was just another reminder of how important it is to work with standard sizes. Your gessoed boards, palette, pochade, daypack not only can be easily sources they also can easily interact, while frame sizes for the end result are cheap and simple.

I purchased an A4 box from Amazon and brought along a few of my tripod brackets from Jackson’s Art Supply. Since I did not have any hardware for fixing the top of the easel at an angle, I had to improvise with a side bar. Additionally, I realized how important it would be to have expandable side trays for holding paints and brushes while working. They would need to nesting later for traveling.

In the end, just before we returned to Belgium, I came up with this. Neither version had been field tested however, between the two I had made the following changes: side trays, easel arm and glass palette mentioned above, but also the orientation of the compartments underneath. (I had changed them from vertical to horizontal in VII so as to function better for brush and tube storage.) I knew I’d want to make similar adjustments (to version I) once we got back to Bruges but that was entirely possible.

Now truly, if only the weather would cooperate, I was ready for a summer of en plein air painting.