Annual flyfishing/painting trip

My brother and I head out Sunday morning for our annual flyfishing trip to northcentral Pa. We do alot of walking, climbing, and crawling along the streams during the coarse of a day,and I like taking my portable paintbox( wood cigar box) with me but by the end of the day it starts feeling pretty heavy so this year I wanted to try to lighten the load a little.  This portable setup is just for my stream  fishing, I also bring an easel and tripod when  back at the cabin.

To lighten the load I am going to leave the box at home.

I have different size pieces of canvas I precut and toned to get rid of the white of the canvas. These I will tape onto a 8x10 masonite panel which will be my easel now, I can prop it up against a tree or a rock or just hold it in my hand. I am also switching paints, going from oils to acrylics. With the fast drying acrylics I won't have to worry about smearing the painting while we are walking to the next spot. I just remove the dry painting from the masonite panel and tape on another canvas.

To help keep the acrylics workable I brought a bottle of Liquitex pallette wetting spray. I was actually looking for a spray bottle to put water in and found this.It is liquid medium. I'll use a small clear plastic pallette to put the paints on.
To wash the  brushes I have a small container of soapy water, a rag and sponge in a ziplock bag for cleanup.
              
A week of flyfishing and painting sounds pretty good to me. The weather forcast is not as promising, chance of rain each day except Monday.



Will return on Fri afternoon.

Here are some images from past trips.

Tree Reflection

Tree Reflection 12"x12" acrylic on cradled wood panel.

This is a stream that runs thru the state park we stay at when on vacation in the fall. 

The second picture shows the sketch I did on location that day -sorry about the white line going down the sketch, I accidently painted on it while doing another painting months later.

And me sitting on a blowdown where I did the sketch. The cigar paintbox is convienent for when you have other things you are doing (fishing) besides painting but you still want to do some sketches during the day. You carry it on shoulder and its out of the way until you need it.

Early Morning plein-air painting

Went out early this morning to do a little plein-air painting. Even though it was raining and kinda dark there is still a mood to try to capture.

I like to start off in this spot at dawn because each beginning of the day is different. This spot allows you to get a little atmosphere in between the layers of the landscape. The light rain helped keep the background trees lighter in value than the trees on this side of the lake. This helps add depth to your paintings.

Constantly doing these outdoor sketches in all types of weather helps you learn about color,value and mood. Alot of the sketches are not worthy of a frame, but they do provide you with the information you need when it comes time to paint in the studio.

You can see the paintbox in action, it is small enough to sit on my lap inside the truck. Not a bad way to spend the morning if you like the outdoors.