En Plein Air
Making art en plein air, or outdoors, is by far one of my favorite things to do. There is not much that compares to engaging with beauty, while surrounded by beauty. It takes art-making from focused creative output to an experience.
So how does one get started? I have three tips:
First off, determine what sorts of things you will need to pack for your preferred medium. Art tools and easel setups can be many and varied in design and style, and can go from inexpensive homemade rigs to more expensive pochade1 boxes crafted specifically for your medium of choice. If you’re a painter, you will be packing entirely different tools than I will as a charcoal artist.
Secondly, determine how heavy you want your gear to be based on where you most typically will be working.
For example, as a charcoal artist, my gear is fairly light. The entire kit of all my charcoal, brushes, assorted tools packed inside my pochade box with the tripod weighs only 7 pounds. This is excellent as I am often hiking into the back country, which means I am also carrying a backpack full of snacks, water, and first aid kit, plus my monocular, pocket microscope, and small science dissection kit. I sometimes also carry my portable stool with me….
…Which leads me to why it is important to know how heavy of a load you are capable and interested in carrying. By the time I load up and strap on all my gear, I’m carrying double or even quadruple what the pochade and tripod weigh. After five or six miles into a hike, with the sun beating down on you, it can get pretty tedious.
And lastly, don’t be afraid to try something out. My gear has undergone many different revisions over the years, and I tend to pack different stuff depending on what kind of outing I’m going on (to the local park vs. on a 5-mile one-way excursion). Just because you packed everything up one way or another doesn’t mean you’re locked in and now you have to stick with it. Get in the habit of viewing every expedition outside as a learning opportunity. When you get back home, take a moment to debrief: keep what worked, ditch what didn’t.
And above all, try again. :-)
“Pochade” comes from the French word for ‘pocket.’ A pochade box is a handy dandy little box that is designed to hold all your art supplies (typically for painting), and can set up with an incorporated easel for your canvas.