paint smuggling & plein air

I just packed my gear to hike and do some plein air when it started to rain.

 

I was going to head out anyway but had some other things that I wanted to do in the studio and thought I’d go later. I did need to warm up so I so just opened the studio door and made the painting below -so don’t know if it is plein air, since technically I was under a roof. 

 Ireland 2 oil on canvas 8x10in 2012

The rains here are lovely-usually light and short-lived, although it can happen quite frequently in the same day. I’ve been hiking and researching paint locations where there is thick tree shelter that I can duck under if/when it does rain. Now I just need to be brave and get out there!

Here is my plein air set up. (minus the plein air)

 

In a previous blog I mentioned researching different easel options and decided the half box was the most practical. I like to work ie sight-sizing which means that you are eye level with your reference and your surface. I find pochades attached to tripods are too low, plus I lose things and didn’t want to bring anything that needs assembling.

Because of luggage weight restrictions I left my heavier wood pallet at home and just constructed cardboard ones here. The cardboard will quickly absorb the oil from the pigment as well as medium, which is a technique that Degas would use when he wanted to work with drier paint. I just cover the canvas with medium and work wet into wet.

Also as mentioned in earlier posts I researched and spoke with artists who travel with oil colour and heard many horror stories. It seems even with printed safety standards it is up to the sole discretion of the customs officer in regards to confiscating them. I also looked into purchasing oil paints here and was surprised to see how expensive they are compared to Canadain prices, although I am sure there must be stores around more reasonably priced then what I found on the web. But then add on the exchange rate re Euro/Canadian! Since I was bringing acrylic anyway as well as drawing materials I wasn’t going to worry too much if they removed my oil paints.

So in a ‘what have I got to lose?’ frame of mind, I decided to try smuggling them in. Since I purchase oil paint in large tubes, I could afford to part with some. So I took empty vitamin containers and simply sqeezed a small amount of paint into each one, then placed the containers in zipped toiletry bags.

They got through, and now I just cut the top half off the container, take a knife and put the pigment directly into the metal trays in my easel. Since I am only able to work with oil early on in my time here (to allow for drying), I will simply discard the unused portion, clean my tray and that’s it. I also brought a minute amount of cobalt drier and just added that to the medium to increase drying.