I’ve been on the market for a nice pochade painting box for a while. There are plenty of nice ones like the Open Box M or the Strada or the Ease L. Unfortunately, some are not available in the UK and all of them are eye-wateringly (not sure that this adverb exists) expensive. I couldn’t justify spending £300+ for what is, in the end, a small wooden box.
So, I finally decided to hack a cheap one I’ve bought years ago (left) and create my own pochade box for painting ‘en Plein air‘ (open-air).
The new Wochade™ (below) was born. It took one afternoon, a few screws and nails, some wood glue and a bit of ingenuity.
I’ve attached it to an old camera tripod which I had for more than 20 years and it’s surprisingly lightweight and stable. Perfect for portability and outdoor painting.
Of course, I will need to adjust a few little niggles I’ve already noticed here and there, but overall I’m happy with it. A couple of days ago I tested it in my garden and produced a couple of little paintings of what I could see above the fence.
I saw clouds, trees and rooves. Strange word rooves… Maybe ‘roofs’ is better… Mmm… There’s something odd with English words today…
Anyway, they looked a bit ugly and uninteresting to me, so, I decided to get rid of the bloody rooves, and shrink the landscape in order to fit the trees only. Why? Why not?
I was on a roll, I turned 180º and spotted two almost identical trees rising above the fence. Could I do another one? Yes, of course, I had all the colours I needed from my new palette and I was enjoying this new ‘en Plein air‘ thing… Why not? It’s just that two trees were not enough to balance this landscape. Could I cut and paste one of them and justify it as an artistic licence? Yes, why not?
What do you think?
To be honest, I did both paintings on the same day, but the other way around. First ‘Three Trees’ and second ‘No Rooves’. I just took another artistic licence and changed the story as well. Why not?
