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About Painting in the field

Painting in the field is so different from painting in the studio as to be a different art. In the field, the artist is a visitor, accommodating to circumstance. A studio is a circumstance created to be conducive to making art. Conditions in the field are in dramatic flux and pose continual sources of distraction and inconvenience. The only way to paint well is to become hyper-focused, and intensely engaged. My plain air paintings almost always have a highly detailed foreground as well as some sort of grand vista. It is the nature of grand vistas that they are far off in space and their appearance does not change without a lot of hiking. The appearance of the foreground, however, is a matter of inches. I spend a great deal of time choosing a foreground, not the least of my effort being finding an appropriate place for sitting, standing and storing the work in progress.

This same foreground requires that I sit or lie on the ground to complete the bottom portion of the canvas unless the place where the canvas sits has a flat topped rock onto which I can place the painting to finish the details of plants, pebbles and leaf litter that populate my extreme foreground imagery. I can't stand for more than 8 hours per day on very rough or very sloped ground. I always need to make the choice of whether to move camp to near the painting or hike up to 2 miles each way to the painting site. I am attracted to open vistas, so I do not have to consider bear habitat as much as if I were drawn to nooks and intimate vales, but certainly bears are a matter of some concern.

Painting in the field poses many of the same issues as any wilderness camping venture. My painting kit weighs 30-35 pounds. Survival gear and food for a 2 week trip in the Alaskan mountains is on the order of 60 pounds. I have a study tent and a good pack. My only luxuries are one book, a small sketch pad for a journal, a camp chair and a second sleeping pad and coffee. Sometimes I take a trekking pole that doubles as a support for my painting tarp. The combined weight is more than I can carry over rough ground, so I must make 2 trips to get away from my put-in point. In practice this means that I cannot plan on painting on location further than about 5 miles from where the bush plane lands or my boat takes me. I am constantly working to lighten my load. I take only dried foods. My canvas stretchers in their current incarnation are constructed of 1/2" pull-truded carbon fiber tubes deswigned for very large kites with bass wood hot glued to the tubes so I have a surface that will accept staples. No piece is longer than 45". The corners are copper pipe fittings. I have tripod legs that are attached to the frame with hose clamps. My entire painting kit of oils, alkyd medium, thinner, brushes rags...everything but the canvas and stretcher fits into a smallish tackle box. I have a custom-made tarp to protect the canvas and for me to paint under when it is raining. The tarp has a velcro strip down the middle. I staple velcro to the top of my stretched canvas so the tarp will not slip. My canvas is always precut. Usually I take synthetic canvas, but sometimes I use a light weight pre-primed linen. I carry the canvas rolled tightly in a pvc sewer pipe. When I buy my canvas it is wider than I need so I cut off the excess with a hacksaw. This leaves me a roll of 6 yards by 11". I take one of these rolls with me on every wilderness trip and use it for sketching.

I use oils with alkyd medium rather than acrylics. All water based media are so sensitive to even the slightest drizzle that I find them unsuited to outdoor painting. There is also the issue of cleaning acrylics, a process that will pollute the water table with a lot of pigmented paint. Oils and alkyds, on the other hand use paint thinner for the most part and that is something I carry in and out of the wilderness. The only pollution is from washing off my brushes once a day in soapy water and evaporation of small amounts of paint thinner into the air. Oil paints have a very large range of permanent colors. The paint tends to carry a high pigment load so small amounts of paint will tint large amounts of white or medium. I use alkyd white and every bit of paint applied in the field has either alkyd white or alkyd medium in it. This assures that the paint will be dry to the touch by the next day.

Here is a typical painting venture. I fly into some remote location and spend much of the day seeking out and setting up a camp site. The next day I scout out several likely painting sites and either that day or early the next I go to one off the sites taking a pack with a single piece of precut canvas (76" x 48") and the knocked-down stretchers, my tarp, stakes, a big lunch and full rain gear so I will not get caught by a change in weather. I stretch and set up the canvas and tarp using tent stakes and parachute cord and commence to sketch in pencil, graphite sticks and compressed charcoal. When the sketch is done I seal the canvas with dilute alkyd medium. By this time it is usually about 8 PM and time to go back to camp and make supper. I try to get back to the painting site every day by 8 or 9 after a hearty breakfast. During the day I paint the whole time except for lunch and snacks. Sometimes it will rain and I'll either paint or nap under the tarp. Occasionally the weather will get nasty enough (canvas too wet for paint to stick) and I'll tent up and snooze, sketch, journal and read. Sometimes I'll go for a 1 - 2 hour hike before supper. Sometimes I'll go for a 1 - 2 hour hike after supper. If I am camping alone, everything takes a bit longer than when I travel in a group. Even when I travel with a small group, my time out at the painting site is almost always completely alone.

I paint all day, every day. When I am tired I nap. When I'm hungry I eat. If I have used all my canvas or if I have finished my last painting 1-2 days before it is time to leave then I will go on a much longer hike at the end of the trip. My trips are usually between 10 and 18 days long. I have gone on one trip where I was completely alone for 9 days and another for 10 days. Sometimes, but rarely, in the middle of a trip I will go on a longish hike between paintings. A 72" x 44" painting takes between 3 and 6 days to complete.

list of stuff for 2 weeks

food--1.75 - 2 lb per day plus 1 1/2 days for emergencies

The usual sorts of food, though I never buy freeze dried anything. I dehydrate my own veggies (corn, peas, carrots and beans). I take quite a bit of dry cheese like dry jack, good English cheddar, parmesan. King Arthur baker's supply sells some great stuff for camping like white cheddar powder, tomato powder, tomato paste and pesto sauce in a tube. I take quite a bit of gorp, power bars, and cliff bars. I take soups in a package that take 10 minutes to cook, instant potatoes, couscous, pasta, minute rice, dry bean flakes, red lentils. My condiments include Frank's hot sauce, curry powder, salt and one head of garlic. I use extra virgin olive oil and I do not take butter. I take turkey jerky and Gallo dry salami. Carry a good bit of M-n-M's and other chocolate (I do not eat chocolate or drink coffee after dinner because they gives me leg cramps) Coffee, hot chocolate, ginger and mint tea. Powdered Gatorade or tang. Lots of instant oatmeal and dry fruits. 2 pieces of pilot bread per day. Peanut butter. I put meat, chocolate, and cheese in a bear container and I put the rest of my food in a stuff sack.

shelter

  • pack - Gregory Massif
  • tent - North Face mountain 25, 'footprint'
  • bag - Marmot 0 degree
  • pads - thermorest 3/4 length
  • waffle foam pad
  • thermorester chair

food prep

  • MSR whisperlite stove
  • Sweetwater water filter
  • titanuim spork
  • 1 pint tupperware bowl with lid
  • 2 1 liter nalgene bottles
  • 1 plastic cup
  • pot lifter
  • single cup gold cofee filter
  • gerber multi-purpose tool
  • 1/2 oz soap
  • scrubbie
  • camp towel
  • toothbrush
  • 2 liter pot
  • 1 liter pot
  • 3 pints white gas

other essentials

  • 2 deet 30% plus 1 deet 100%
  • head net
  • petzel head lamp
  • first aid kit with:
  • ace bandage
  • band-aids
  • neosporin, ibuprofen, pain pills with codeine
  • sometimes I take a suture kit
  • vitamins and daily meds
  • 1/4 roll toilet paper
  • 2-3 bic lighters
  • repair kit
  • with barge cement
  • tent repair patches
  • spare plastic fasteners for pack
  • small bag of tent pole elastic
  • 150 ' of cord
  • 6 extra tent stakes
  • 10' x 12 tarp in a stuff sack with an aluminum tent pole

camera equipment

  • 35 mm manual focus Minolta SLR camera
  • 17 mm lens
  • 6 rolls ASA 100 and 200 color print film. I like Fuji and Agfa brands sometimes I will take a tripod with a spherical panorama head (5 !!!! pounds just for the head !!!!)

art supplies

  • 4-5 drafting pencils with 10 extra leads
  • small carbide lead pointer
  • 6-8 8" square cotton rags (cut from t-shirts)
  • 10 brushes (I use synthetic black sable and synthetic water color as well as smallish bristle rounds) in a 1' long plastic tube
  • sharpened putty knife
  • pallet knife
  • pallet made out of hinged plexiglass
  • 2 large tubes of Griffin brand alkyd white
  • 1 1/2 cups of alkyd medium (liquin is best)
  • 1 1/2 cup of paint thinner in a sealed brush washer from Holbein
30 ml tubes of the very best quality oil paints:
  • sap green
  • quinacridone magenta
  • quinacridone violet
  • cad yellow medium
  • cad yellow light
  • green gold
  • phthalo blue
  • phthalo green
  • ultramarine or indanthrone blue
  • paynes grey
  • cad red light or pyroll orange
  • burnt sienna
  • yellow ochre
  • red ochre transparent

misc.

  • film canister of compressed charcoal sticks
  • black and decker lightweight staple gun
  • box of staples
  • 3 empty clear film cannisters.
  • sewer tube with canvas for 3 paintings
  • knock down stretcher bars