I have been working on a small project and got it completed yesterday and decided to put it to the test this evening. I picked up a nice, wooden cigar box on Ebay a while back, with the intention of using it as a small pochade box. The measurements in the ad weren’t entirely accurate and I ended up getting a box that was not as tall as I was led to believe.
So, it has sat for a few months before I decided to see what could be done with it. I created a palette from some foam core that I had. I covered the palette surface with two coats of gesso, then two coats of gray acrylic paint and lastly, two coats of acrylic varnish. Then let it sit for a couple of days.
The box will hold six or seven small tubes of paint, various short handle brushes, a palette knife and not much else. I need to find some very small, short glass jars that I can put in the box for medium and solvent.
Using it at my desk this evening it worked out great. I do have to learn a couple of small things to get used to using it. When holding my brushes at the ends, some of my fingers tend to point straight down. Well, that’s not such a good thing when the palette is right there. I was constantly having to wipe the paint off my fingertips.
Anyway, it worked great and here is my first “masterpiece” from it. Now I need to take it out for a test drive in the environment it was meant for, that of doing some small plein air studies.
