Preparing for Travel

House guests kept my pretty busy during President's day weekend, so not much time for blogging until now. It has snowed off and on here for the past few days, but nothing really lingers too long. The Key West trip coming up this weekend is seeming even sweeter as I look out my window and see yesterday's cold weather remnants on the ground. All I ask is to just keep the roads and airplane wings clear of ice until I can get down south! Today I am playing with some art supplies so that I can determine what to bring with me down to Key West. If I had no limitations I would just bring my oils and easel, because in my opinion there is just nothing like them! But a plein air painter or sketcher has to consider the most portable and lightweight options when traveling, and especially when dealing with the airlines, and oils don't always fit the bill.

Typical plein air travel gear can include:

• Easel or pochade box with attached tripod
• Paints
• Painting medium
• Paint Thinner (for oils- best to buy this at the destination if possible)
• Brushes and palette knives
• Hat and rubber gloves (optional but I am a messy painter)
• Canister for paint thinner (for oils) or water (for other water media)
• Small spray bottle filled with water (for water media)
• Paper towels
• Plastic bag for trash
• Bug spray and sunscreen
• Bottled water
• Small sketchbook and pencils (for working out compositions)
• Camera
• Painting surfaces (canvas, panels, papers, etc.)
• Wet panel carrier (for oils)

Other optional supplies might be:

• View finder (a little tool for determining your composition on the fly)
• Portable chair or stool
• Extra bungees and weights (for weighting your easel on a windy day)
• Umbrella
• A rolling case or dolly to cart all of this stuff around!

By no means am I saying that all of these supplies are required. Some watercolorists get by with two brushes, a watercolor block, sketch pad, a small container, some pens and pencils, and 3 to 5 paint colors, all stashed in a backpack. I think it is all what one feels comfortable with. A studio painter usually has more "stuff" within arms length, and paring down requires some effort and acclimation. I have done both studio and plein air painting, so I feel pretty comfortable with both. Even so the temptation is to bring more (maybe too much) stuff "just in case I need it". I'll try and post my painting kit here once I've figured it out.

-Jennifer Young; Vibrant Landscapes www.jenniferyoung.com Contact

Winter Chores

This year one of my main goals is to get organized and streamline my office and studio. There is a great book called Organizing From The Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern that is very helpful in this respect. This book is especially appealing to me because her approach is both creative and accessible. One of her techniques is to set up your environment in stations, according to task. So, for instance, in my studio I have a painting station, a framing station, a storage area, a cleaning station, and so on. Within those stations, every tool or supply has a "home" so that you always know where to find it. That is the idea, any way, and when you set it up like that from the start, it really does work! But when I moved to the new studio I kind of got away from that, and instead just set up as quickly as possible to get started with my painting. This worked for a while, but now my calendar is filling up with travel plans, (Key West countdown: 2 weeks!!) and the upcoming workshop. Organization is not an option, it really is a requirement. It is worth taking that extra bit of time to set things up systematically so that I can work smarter, not harder.

This week is also tax week, which I always rather dread even though I have an okay system and can usually get through just fine. I guess it's just that I already do a lot of desk and computer work with my website design and maintenance. It's a challenge to focus my left brain on papers, reports, and numbers when I have a painting of Venice sitting on my easel calling me.

Read about Jennifer's current and upcoming workshops here!

Travel Plans

Travel is one of the most joyful parts of my life as an artist. I love traveling to new and beautiful places to paint and gather inspiration, and I feel so fortunate that my business is able to support my adventures. This February we will be taking a much welcomed trip down to sunny Key West. We were supposed to go last Spring, but bad weather caused us to cancel those plans. Here's a scene I painted from photos I took on our last trip to Key West. It's called "Sunset Celebration". It measures 11x14", oil on canvas. For more details about the painting, check out my scenes of the American South section on my website:

I've also started planning for a June trip to Lake Como, Italy! I think the scenic views of the lake regions in Northern Italy are some of the most striking and beautiful in the country. The uniqueness of Lake Como is that it is distinctively Mediterranean, with lush flora, palm trees and cypresses, but set against a stunning backdrop of the Alpine mountains. I am so excited to be returning to this area, since the last time I went was many years ago and my camera broke on day two!

I will be painting on location both in Key West and in Como. I am primarily an oil painter but I'm considering bringing watercolors instead, since they allow for easier cleanup and are more portable. Plus, with the new airline regulations I have heard many instances where other artists have had their oil paints confiscated by the airlines. That's quite a setback to experience, considering the painter has to buy a whole new set of expensive paints at the destination site. Supposedly you can bring a letter from the paint manufacturer insisting that the oil paints are made with vegetable oils and do not contain but a trace of ingredients that would be considered "flammable".

But in past trips since 9/11 I have not wanted to take the chance. If I wanted to paint in oils overseas I ended up just shopping for small tubes of paint in the destination country. This can actually be a really fun experience, because there are so many fine products in the art stores of France and Italy. But it does take a bit of extra planning and time if one is going to be staying primarily out in the country.

Oil painting substrates

I thought I'd write a little here about some of the oil painting substrates I use on a regular basis.Canvas: The canvas I use most often for anything over 16x20 inches in size is one that has staples only on the back side of the stretcher bars. Small metal tacks are nailed into the sides of the stretcher to hold the canvas secure. This is a very sturdy, fine canvas with an old world look to it, primed with acrylic gesso. The surface is smooth enough so that it is not absorbent, but not so smooth that there is no canvas "tooth".

The stretched canvases I have been using for my landscapes are standard-depth canvas (around 3/4" deep), so generally the finished paintings are finished off with a frame for display. The great benefit to these canvases is that their depth allows them to easily fit into any variety of frame styles and mouldings, from the very traditional to the very contemporary.

I have lately been considering trying some gallery wrapped canvases for my landscapes. I used to use them in my older work, like the painting shown here. The gallery wrapped canvases are deeper than the standard canvas and have no staples around the perimeter, allowing the canvas edges to be painted as well. They offer a clean contemporary look, and have the benefit of being lightweight and versatile. While these canvases can be framed, one needs to find frames that have very deep rabbet depths so that the canvas edge (which is around 1 1/2" deep) does not extend beyond the frame when you look at it in profile. In general these canvases are meant to have painted edges and are displayed unframed.Panels: Often times for smaller works I will use birchboard panels or gessoed canvas that is mounted on a hardboard or wood panel. (I never use the canvases that are mounted on cardboard. They are too cheap and flimsy and don't hold up for professional use. In any event they are not archival and I use archival materials for my work.)The panels are great for painting out of doors (painting "en plein air") because they are flat and can be packed and carried more easily than stretched canvas. Sometimes I will prime these panels with a neutral base coat of gray or raw sienna. I use these when I travel and for smaller works no larger than 16x20":

 

 After a while they do get heavy, however, so I am always in search of the most lightweight option available! The lightest I've found is the birchboard panels, but these are not commercially available. The birchboard (shown here, bottom gray panel) can be purchased at the hardware store in larger sheets that I have cut down to size. They have a smooth side (for painting) and a rough side. However, I prime them on both sides to seal them and prevent warping.