New Pochade Box from Alla Prima!

Santa was indeed very nice this Christmas! I have a new painting box to take with me when I go outside to paint. For those of  you who aren't familiar with any of this outdoor painting business, I will try to give you a tour.
In recent years, plein air painting, made famous by the Impressionists, has had a big revival.  One can see artists of all kinds painting with lots of different easels and equipment at various venues. There are many competitions, fairs, and events that focus on plein air painting with prizes and well known painters that lend cache to the event.  Painting outside has its own difficulties...fighting the rapidly changing light, bugs, heat, and your equipment. Enter the French easel, which  you can see in the rear in front of my new box.  The French easel, although relatively inexpensive compared to my new, hand crafted box made by Alla Prima, is heavy, bulky, difficult to set up and has numerous problems. I have had it for years and have struggled with it from day one. But I must say, I learned a great deal about what I needed and how to lug stuff around with this old French easel.  Having learned from this, I was better equipped to make a decision about a new box.
My new box, made by hand by Ben Haggett (who is a delight to talk with), is a work of art in itself. Ben is a plein air painter and everything that an artist needs has been incorporated into this small, thoughtful, pochade box. His company is called Alla Prima Pochade and the pochade that I have is called the Bitterroot model. Both of the drawers on either side have room for shorter brushes, paint, some small tools and other necessities. The drawers can be entirely removed as well. The box can carry 4 canvas panels and holds your work securely via an ingenious magnetic, movable "shelf". There are many other cool features, but you can easily search for Alla Prima Pochade and there are numerous YouTube videos with artists and even Ben himself demonstrating. I can't speak highly enough of this box and being able to slip it into a tripod so easily and just start working immediately is a joy.*
I hope to get out as much as possible as spring comes around. The vineyards are a bit sparse right now, but with the rains and more rain to come, things are greening up and the mustard and lavender aren't too far away.
Sorry for so long and not posting, But surgery took some of the wind out of my sails and it has taken awhile to get busy. I am still trying to find my way in a new place. I miss my friends in Virginia and would love for them all to be transplanted here!

*the evaluation of  the Alla Prima Pochade painting box is strictly my personal opinion and I have not been compensated monetarily or otherwise for this review.

Portsmouth Plein Aire Painting

A lovely day, good light and a charming view of a white picket fence and houses in Portsmouth. When the weather is great it is wonderful to be outdoors, but when things get hot and sticky or buggy and rainy, I fade pretty fast. There are wonderful plein aire painters that endure all kinds of things in order to "catch the light" and I'm afraid that I'm not one of them. So, deciding to paint outside is often a last minute thing, when the weather report looks good and my French easel is packed.  I love the challenge of trying to work very fast and to focus intently on the subject and to edit quickly in order to capture a scene. When people stop to talk and watch, I have to say that it makes me self conscious and that I have never been really comfortable with it as some painters are. I hope to get some painting done when I travel to Lexington and can catch those great Blue Ridge mountains and the Shenandoah Valley. After that, I'm off to Charleston to do some painting there. If the weather doesn't cooperate, I will instead do other things like visit galleries and shops or sketch and take photos for painting later in my studio...or simply just wander. We will see.

Norfolk Botanical Plein Air with Adele

Today was just too full of mishaps and hilarity when Adele and I went to paint outside at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens. First, we had to load up, get there, get coffee, make a trip to the bathroom and then scout for a spot to paint. This all takes forever...all the while we both are thinking...the light, the light...it's going to change...hurry. So, finally we found a spot.
Adele set up quickly and for some unknown reason, I couldn't get one of the legs on my French easel to unscrew. I mean that I literally ripped my fingertips trying to get this sucker to work. No dice. Finally Adele came over...she couldn't do it either. I eventually gave up and decided to paint with the easel cocked down it the front.  It looked and felt like a sinking ship. Strike one.
Adele, it her very calm voice, then tells me that there is a cute "little snake" swimming merrily across the pond. Great...I HATE snakes. Strike two.
We paint some more and fall into the place where many artists go when working furiously. You know...that coma place when time stops and you forget where you are and then suddenly you realize that 2 hours has passed and it seemed like ten minutes. Loosely, in the back of my mind, I heard the tram operator speaking over her microphone, "and see the artists over there painting our lovely flowers..."
I felt like a monkey in a zoo.
When we took a break from all of this we laughed and cackled about how horrible our paintings were, how it just wasn't working, how difficult it was to work here, how messed up our values were, how wrong the colors were...terrible paintings.
Strike 3, 4 and 5.
We ate lunch and said that we would wipe the paint from the canvas, pack  up and try to salvage the day and take some decent photographs. Which is what we ended up doing.
So- I have nothing to show you for my day's work!
The sad thing is that a lovely woman with several children stopped and raved in front of her kids about my lovely painting. She went on and on and the fact that I had already wiped all of the paint off was lost on her.
I am sure that it all looked better "fuzzy" and "wiped" rather than how I had originally painted it.