Getting ready for plein air painting

Yay! The booklet about plein air painting on Mount Desert Island, Maine arrived today! Who know? I found a SIXTY page booklet on the best places to paint plein air on MDI. This booklet tells you where to go, where the best and nearest parking is, and where the nearest restrooms are, or in some cases that there are no restrooms nearby. The complete title is “Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island Plein Air Artist Guide” and it is written by Gail Ribas. I had a lovely half hour reading through this book and dreaming of all the places I’ll paint when we go to MDI later this summer.

So, for this trip I’ll need a better set-up than my Julian french easel. I am not dragging that on the airplane, though I did take it to Wisconsin last year for a workshop. What was I thinking. After a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out which pochade box I would most like to have, I’ve decided on the Bitterroot by Alla Prima Pochade. But I won’t take that to Maine for two reasons. First, it takes 5-6 weeks to make one so I won’t have it in time. Second, though this is a moot point since I won’t have the box anyway: I also think it’ll be too heavy of a set up once I add a tripod to take on this particular trip. So that will be my pochade box for painting here in the Houston area and when I drive nearby places like Galveston Island and the Hill Country.

For the trip to Maine I’ve decided to try and put together my own makeshift pochade box. Today I went to a large liquor store here in Houston that also sells cigars, I went looking for empty cigar boxes. They only had a few cardboard cigar boxes but they had a beautiful wooden box that had at one time had a bottle of tequila inside of it. For $5 I decided this might work. There were also 4 shot glasses in the box. When the cashier commented on how pretty they were I told her she could have them. She then charged me $3 instead of $5 for the box. I explained what I wanted with the box and she became enthusiastic about the project. She said to come back tomorrow when the woman in charge of the cigars was there and maybe we could empty a cigar box that would fit my needs. Now it’s a group project! So I’ll go back tomorrow and see about that, otherwise I’ll need to make some modifications to my $3 box pictured below: