Plein Air sketching follow up

What Actually Worked (and What Didn't)

Over the past month I’ve had a trip down to the Mornington Peninsula and I'm partway through the Plein AirPril challenge, whereby I’m supposed to do an outdoor painting every day in April. It has been a great chance to properly road-test my three DIY portable setups I'd been tinkering with.

The clear winner: the sketchbook holder

I haven’t used my tripod easel at all, but I’ve used the sketchbook holder constantly. It securely holds both my A5 sketchbooks, one with a hardcover sewn-spine, the other a wire-coil visual diary style. You slide the book covers behind the holder, fold the pages forward, through the slot and spread the pages to where you want and clip them with large bulldog paper clips on either side, and you're done. Even in the wind, it stays put. It's light enough to hold one-handed while standing, or it just rests across your knees when sitting.

The whole setup takes almost no time: a pencil, a pen, a water brush, my homemade CD dot chart palettes. Done. It pays to be agile when the fickle Melbourne weater decides to throw storms, rain, wind gust, but is grey and overcast with occasional surprise sunshine at me all in the same afternoon.

The watercolour sketchboard: promising but …

I only pulled this one out a couple of times. It works, but it's heavier, slower to set up, and critically the protype was made of matte board. Getting drenched a few times took a real toll on it. The bulldog clip slots are a clever idea though, and worth keeping in any future version

Lessons learned the hard way

Bag organisation matters more than you think. Rummaging around for a specific brush mid-session is genuinely annoying. I've since started bundling brushes and pens in cord concealer tubing and keeping them in small ziplock bags. Less disruption searching,

Using Velcro was trickier than it looks. Its holding capacity between it hock and loops surfaces is powerful. So powerful when I tried it for attaching the plastic palettes to the boards, the sticky backing kept pulling off surfaces as I removed the palettes. It was also lifting the paper surface of the matte board, strong double sided tape and hot glue didn't work well either; PVC glue was slightly better. Still experimenting, looking for a heavy duty version on this tape.

Keep your water brushes topped up. I nearly ran out of water mid-sketch one day. Lesson learned: empty, clean, and refill before heading out.

The spray bottle is actually pretty mandatory as well because it lets you keep whatever form of watercolour palette you’re using moist and the paint easier to pick up, especially with a water brush

What's next

I'm planning to rebuild the sketchbook holder in plywood, with slots at the side to hold the sketchbook pages and a slightly larger flap for bigger palettes. For larger work or when usinf larger watercolour pads or blocks, I'll stick with my existing drawing board (the one with the tripod mount) with a camera tripod for a proper travel easel setup.

Overall?  Happy with how it went. Sometimes the simplest, lightest setup really is the best one.