Painting Plein Air with Edge Pro Gear’s Sketchbook Easel – Los Angeles K.L. Britton

Sunday was a beautiful, warm day in Arcadia at the Peck Road Park.  A group of us learning from SaiPing Lok (Simon Lok) went our to watch him demonstrate and give it a go.

People always ask about my easel because it takes approx. 4 minutes to set up.  It’s so portable and easy, and the magnetic canvases also delight.  But let’s get to the details.  After I set up, I put on my canvas, which I had already coated in a wash of ultramarine and sienna and was dried.  My canvas here is 6″x6″, a size that allows me to get really creative with composition without having to decide whether “portrait” or “landscape” mode would be better.

Here is my finished painting, an outcropping in the lake with moutnains, reflections, and a tree.  “Local III – Arcadia” Oil on panel, 6″x6″

It was great fun to go out and paint with everyone, I feel always that I learn so much each time I actually pick up the brush outside.  But I am still not “there” (where I want to be) with my landscapes.  In my head, I go through the ideas of atmosphere:

1. The objects farther away from you will have less contrast and less value changes than the ones closer
2. The objects farther away from you will be desaturated compared to those in front.
3. The local colour is important, but the colour of the light/shadows are just as important or more, and since the light is more or less consistent in your subject, make sure you are adding the light colour to each light mixture.

However, this still looks like a rock with some trees, and I’m not at all certain my water really reads as water.  It just takes more and more practice until I understand where I went wrong here, or what is just ever so slightly off!  I actually think my painting has a beautiful mood, a lot like what I was trying to capture with the soft mountains of Arcadia and the peaceful feeling of the lake compared to the city around it.

I did run into a slightly bigger problem with my Edge Pro Gear Sketchbook Easel today, though.  It was a warm day, and when I opened the easel to paint, the paint had slid around quite a bit, despite the fact I had even used a palette knife to keep in on.  Of course, the glass has no tooth for the paint to hang on to, but just a heads up that particularly on warm days, your paint can be moving around.  It was a pain to clean but it was still worth the little added effort compared to my other easels that take longer to set up.

Check out Peck Road Park

Beautiful

On the way out, in the twilight, the moon 🙂

Thank you for reading!!

 

More paintings, because that’s how I roll. K.L. Britton Art Los Angeles

The Sailor, 6×6 Oil on Panel – Available for purchase here.

One of my other obsessions is fountain pens.  This is a Sailor 1911 Extra Fine with a beautiful gold nib and it writes like a dream.  Had to paint it, of course.

You can find the digital version of this study a few posts back.  I may do yet another – this stunning study by Sargent uses a very limited palette, almost a Zorn palette, and yet it conveys so much.  His is unfinished, and so is mine.  6×6 Oil on panel.

My Sketchbook pro setup in the wild.  What an easy setup – I was on, painted, and cleaned up in under an hour!

Thanks for reading!

Oils for Days – The Edge Pro Gear Sketchbook Pro Effect ;)

So in recent news, I got my Edge Pro Gear Sketchbook on the 25th – and I love it.  That’s the long and short of it.  I’ve been able to use it for small studies and since they’re small, I’ve been doing tons of them.  Here is a selection of my first couple.

My setup in the wild, on my beautiful Koreatown balcony.  I love the rich historical architecture here, and every sunrise and sunset is an incredible inspiration.  The huge advantage of being in L.A.? The weather is good 99% of the time.  Here is the first study I did on the 28th.  Yay.

The Details:

What I love about the Edge pro gear sketchbook

Portable, easy, strong clamps.  Easy remove palette, so I can stick it in the fridge when I’m not painting for a day.  The magnetic turp jar has never fallen over… It’s a world record!   It also contains a gentle cheese hole area where you can wipe your brushes, my brushes come out 90% clean, and I usually only have to soap them once to finish the job.

What I don’t like about Edge Pro Gear Sketchbook, the bad review.

I really only have one complaint… maybe two!  My main gripe is just that my long handled brushes don’t stay on well.  Since they don’t hold on both sides on the tables, they are easy to knock down.  However, my standard handled brushes work great, and I’ve simply switched to a more portable setup with the standard ones!  Easy fix.  My other complaint is that I got a far, far better tripod than the one they sell for a fraction of the price.  My tripod is sturdy, reliable, and beautiful, and cost about $70 on amazon.  It’s more or less an off-brand.  The one they offer online only holds about 2-3 lbs, so if you want to use this tripod with the bigger Edge Pro Gear, you can’t.  The one I got weighs almost the same as the one they sell, but it holds up to 8 lbs – so I can use whichever setup I want when I get myself the larger Edge Pro for Christmas 😉

Overall, it has increased my productivity a millionfold.  I’ve finished more oil paintings in the last two weeks than I had in the whole blackout, where I was concentrating on drawing.  I am very, very pleased.

Thank you for reading!