Students at Flying W Ranch.


Plein air workshop in Chase Co. Kansas.

Supplies that are needed for painting outdoors no matter which media you choose.

Clothing:  The workshop will be held rain or shine!  This means you should be prepared to paint in a variety of weather.  Wear layers so you can add or shed as you need.  Clothing should be neutral-colored because bright color or white reflects onto your canvas, influencing colors in your painting.  Wear a long-sleeved paint shirt to protect arms and long pants because we may be in taller grass.  Wear comfortable hiking or jogging type shoes.

Sun and Heat Protection:  Bring a brimmed hat and sun block to protect yourself from the sun.  A brimmed hat is also a necessity to protect from glare while you’re painting.  Sunglasses can’t be worn because they change the way you see color. Bring plenty of water to keep hydrated. Camp Wood will let us store water bottles in their refrigerator.

Bug Spray:  Spray your pants, sleeves, and around the ground around your feet to keep away mosquitoes, etc.

Field Easel:  A pochade box on a tripod or a French easel will work well.  There are several field easel suppliers listed later in this material.  Make sure it is sturdy in wind, or you can weigh it down with a bag of rocks or similar.

Backpack:  A sturdy backpack with good shoulder straps large enough for carrying water bottles, sunscreen, jacket, hat, brushes, paints, sketchbook, etc.  Ideally, you should be able to carry everything you need in one trip to your location.

Umbrella:  Not necessary, but helpful to keep the sun off your palette and canvas. Also helps in rainy weather.  Special artist umbrellas are available to attach to an easel; or inexpensive, pliable C-clamp umbrellas work too.  Colored umbrellas should be painted inside with gray spray paint so it doesn’t influence your color choices.

Paper towels, cotton rags, baby wipes:  Keep plenty around to clean brushes, pastels, and hands.  Also have several plastic grocery bags around to keep trash so you leave your location as you found it.

Viewfinder:  Used to isolate a desired scene for painting.  You can use an empty 35mm slide mount or two L-shaped pieces of mat board paper clipped together to form a rectangular opening.  Cally uses the ViewCatcher which is endorsed by Skip Whitcomb.  The website for the ViewCatcher is:
http://www.colorwheelco.com/viewcatcher/

Value Finder:  A grayscale card with values from one to ten is also helpful in the field. You can hold it up next to your scene to help determine the value of an object.  There is also a good value scale on the Color Wheel website: http://www.colorwheelco.com under the ViewCatcher menu button.

Sketch books:  Keep a sketch book and pencils around to create thumbnail sketches.

Rubber or latex gloves:  Not necessary, but helps protect hands.

“Hazardous Waste” Buckets:  Please be aware that you will be responsible for carrying out your paint thinner, mineral spirits, or any other hazardous waste.  If you need to change out your brush washer often, we recommend bringing another container to keep your waste.

Workshop Materials List - Pastel:

Pastels:  If you are an experienced pastelist, bring your usual palette.  You should have at least 60 pastels in your palette and have at least 3 values of each color family (red-orange: light, medium, dark).

Here are some suggestions, going from hard to soft pastels.  Generally, the softer pastels are most expensive.

•    A small selection of pastel pencils can be handy for adding detail.
•    Hard Pastels:  NuPastels, Faber-Castell, Holbein.  Good for sketching and adding sharply defined accents.
•    Medium Pastels:  Rembrandt, Girault, Art Spectrum, Winsor & Newton, Daler-Rowney. Can be used for
    entire painting, but can also take softer pastel over top.  Dense pigment, comes in a large range of colors.
•     Soft Pastels:  Schmincke, Great American, Unison, Sennelier, Diane Townsend, Terry Ludwig.  Rich in color
    with buttery consistency that’s good for painterly work.  The purest pigment.  Will fill your paper fastest.

Paper:  Bring your paper of choice, enough to do 2-4 paintings per day and (2) 6x8 sketches.  Kim uses either Wallis or makes her own painting surface (see below).  If white, tone your paper with earth tones such as burnt sienna, umber, or ochre. Here are some suggestions:

•    Wallis sanded paper.  In white or belgian grey.  You can lightly tone the paper with watercolor, acrylic,
    alcohol or solvent based washes if desired. 
•    La Carte sanded paper. You can’t get it wet, but it comes in a variety of colors.
•   Art Spectrum comes in a variety of beautiful colors including some very nice darks.

Make Your Own Painting Surface:
Make your own painting surface on museum board or illustration board.  Gesso both sides of the board several times to prevent warping.  To make a translucent ground, mix 3 parts acrylic matte medium (such as Golden brand) to 3 parts very fine pumice dust to 2 parts water.  Ground pumice can be found at stores and online at Woodcraft, VanDykes, or other companies specializing in wood finishing.  You can experiment with the amount of water used, but make sure there is enough binder (acrylic medium) so when it’s dry, no powder comes off.

Using a large house painting brush, apply 2 to 3 layers of pumice mixture on to your board, letting each one dry before you apply the next.  You can experiment with the direction you brush on the pumice mixture.  Kim typically puts on 3 layers in loose, diagonal strokes in order to get a more spontaneous surface.

Other Tools: (*indicates required item)
*Drawing board; *artist’s tape or clips to hold paper to the board; blending tools - cotton cloths, blending stumps, kneaded erasers, paintbrushes; packing tape, bristle brushes, fine sand paper to take out pastel or rough up surface; workable spray fixative/final spray fixative.


Workshop Materials List - Oil:

Paints:  If you are an experienced oil painter bring your usual palette.

Kim’s palette (Gamblin oil paints):
Cad Yellow Light, Cad Orange, Cad Red Light, Alizarin Permanent, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue, Cad Green, Sap Green, Viridian, Transparent Earth Red, Titanium White

Brushes:  An assortment of brights, flats, and filberts, No. 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12,  in a soft synthetic (sabline) and/or bristle.  Good brands are the Ruby Satin line of Silver Brushes, Utrecht 300-B Finest, and Utrecht 209 series bristle. The Silver brushes you can order from Jerry’s Artarama. The Utrecht brushes can be found at Utrecht in Kansas City or on their website.

Painting Panels:  Bring panels ranging in size from 8x10 to 12x16.  Plan on enough panels to do 2-4 paintings per day.  For field work, pre-primed (oil or acrylic) medium tooth canvas or linen mounted to hardboard, gatorboard or plywood works well.  You may also use your favorite panels or stretched canvas if you prefer.  I caution against using the chip board backed panels because they can eventually warp.  Pre-tone your canvas with a transparent wash of cad. red light, burnt sienna, umber, ochre or other warm color.

Palette:   A palette can sit inside the pochade box or easel, or you can bring a hand-held palette.  Paper palettes are discouraged because they are too flimsy for outdoors and soak up oil paints.

Brush Cleaning Solution:  Use odorless mineral spirits such a Gamosol’s.

Misc.:  Portable brush washer to hang from easel, palette knives, and wooden, plastic or cardboard wet canvas carrier boxes.
Students at Chase Fishing Lake.


Studio workshop in Wichita, KS.