Many of you take your watercolors out into the field. By field I mean coffee shops, parks, and other fun places to go and paint. The activity is called Plein Air painting. It makes for such a fun little adventure to go somewhere else other than the four walls of your studio and throw paint at paper. Somehow that specialty coffee tastes extra good when you are sitting outside and painting as you sip.
I have a great pairing to help you do just that. This post is about how to enjoy plein air painting by making it easy. Hahnemühle makes a tin that’s about 4″ x 6″ and it holds thirty watercolor postcards. Now, the secret is that the tin is actually deeper than it needs to be to hold all this postcards. There’s a styrofoam insert that you can throw away then use that extra space to put all the stuff you need to go out into the world and paint! Let me show you.
This tin will hold a lot of stuff! As you can see, I could have added several other things one would use for plein air. You could definitely fit some folded tissues, a pencil sharpener, a blending stump & even a nice fountain pen. On top of all those pens etc. you can fit at least ten postcards! I love painting on the two surfaces that the postcards come in.
The ROUGH Hahnemühle postcards have a heavy texture that adds to the artwork’s interest. I have used brush pens on this surface with success. Now though, we’re so lucky that there are COLD PRESSED postcards available so I’d probably choose to use those if I intend to do any lettering. As you can see below, the artwork stays bright and vivid on this 230gsm paper. I find the experience of using them very immediate and I therefore appreciate having thirty postcards in the tin. NO cutting down of paper, finding a ruler, deciding on a size etc. For me, that’s bliss sometimes. I can just pull a few out and go to town.
I have painted using both Schmincke paint and my Da Vinci Trio on these postcards. Both watercolor paints are Professional and worked beautifully on this fun watercolor paper. They really are perfect for plein air painting! Learn all about the 2018 custom Schmincke Palette HERE. Add extra colors to your palette HERE. Enter the GIVEAWAY for the 2018 Custom Schmincke Palette HERE!
If you are purchasing the 2018 Custom Schmincke Palette for plein air, remember there is also space between the two rows of half pans within the palette. That space will fit a Da Vinci Casaneo Series 498 Wash Brush (Size 2 has been measured by Wet Paint and it fits!) so you’d also be able to have longer handled brushes when you went out painting. If you want to purchase brushes for the schmincke palette (that are not travel brushes)then please make sure you check with Wet Paint to make sure they will in fact fit within the palette. The Da Vinci Casaneo will be in Wet Paint soon so if you want a cool wash brush, request one be added to your order.
Below is a list of the things I’d put in that cool postcard tin. A note about the watercolor pencil and a little trick a friend told me. If she doesn’t plan to use pen to outline her subjects then she uses a watercolor pencil to draw her art instead of a pencil. When you add your water and paint, the light colored watercolor pencil just disappears into the painting. Brilliant! I still love using pencils but only when I plan to outline with a technical pen, then I just erase the pencil lines.
What You’ll Need For Plein Air:
- Custom Schmincke Palette 2018
- Hahnemühle Postcard Tin (Cold Pressed, Rough)
- Kuretake Water bottle
- Travel brushes {Silver Black Velvet (Set, Singles), Grey Matters, Compact Waterbrush}
- Several technical pens like these (Micron, Staedtler, Zebra)
- Uniball Signo White Gel Pen
- drawing pencil (I prefer an F or an H)
- Kneaded Eraser (no eraser bits and can be molded to get into the smallest spaces!)
- A watercolor pencil (in a light color like ochre/grey/flesh, examples below)
~Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Burnt Ochre
~Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Warm Grey ll
~Caran D’Ache Museum Aquarelle Light Flesh
~Caran D’Ache Museum Aquarelle Yellow Ochre
Antonea Payan
last year i accidentally bought a sheet of arches rough paper. I was frustrated at first but soon started to really appreciate it.Now don’t you know that store doesn’t seem to stock it anymore.
love your sketches!
Tracy
Hi Jenn – I was looking at your extended palette info (the 2017 one with the 5 rows and multiple brands). I wonder if (in one of your many free moments lol) you could list the pigments for those. Some of the brands are easy to find but only the Daniel Smith ones seem to list pigments with the affiliate links. And some of the limited edition ones I can’t find info on. I love your range of colors and am hoping to add some of these (I have quite a few of the pigments already in DS versions) to my new Schmincke custom palette that I’ve already ordered (oo-la-la).