Thank you, I like how you slide the boards for painting into the lid. Also like how the latch secures the palette, that might solve the problem of keeping the drawers closed in a simpler manner, and still being able to use it when it’s closed.

One of my concerns is that I want to work bigger than my box, so thinking the “board” just won’t be part of this, or at most hang on the closed box somehow, or leave an opening in the top for it to slide into. Lot of this is deciding what I don’t want to do, editing things down to just what I need. One of the reasons I want the top to be modular so I can slide it out as I have better ideas, really thinking I just need a attachment to the bottom of the board and almost use the board itself as my easel.

I am spending a lot of time looking at various pochade boxes and easels online, or in the threads here, never seen a setup with a camera before, i think the key is to have it customized to the artist. Each one gives me ideas as to what I can add or remove, I am starting to see it as just palette, brushes, desk, perhaps tubes of paint, water, and other junk.

This artists blog posting was interesting http://powersfineart.com/my-painting-equipment-part-i/ as it described many of the issues relevant to watercolorists and has links to a lot of interesting easels. Kind of don’t see either pochade or french easel as ideal since you should be able to pivot your watercolors flat, or quickly adjust the angle to affect the waters flow on the page, and his camera tripod easel hooked up to a board seems close to ideal in theory. ( I am actually just using a regular wood easel so just getting used to my work surface being vertical, this box should hook onto either setup )

Yes i have read the various threads on the pochade boxes, even a few based on them, they are a good idea and I am still using that as my starting point. My hope though is to tailor it to what I need, which is not oils. I can say that they just are not set up in an ideal manner for water color, perhaps with friction hinges ( so you can make the paper horizontal ) and if they are not deep – I almost prefer the hinge to be on the front of the box and not on the back.

If you look at Vinitas Pappas, and her setup which I linked to, that is aimed at the problems of watercolorists. My hope is to not abandon the idea of a box, and make something that is as elegant as her setup but also more modular. But I am a designer myself, and I like to tackle problems of design like this, so I think I can come up with something else as good eventually, but tailored to how I am going to work. My level of complexity is limited only by what I think i can make, so it’s a concern but not the most important one.

[*]Has to be able to adjust paper surface incline easily and constantly – friction hinges, but not as good as a ball joint.
[*]Often working on a board which has paper attached by being wet or with clips, will usually be much larger than the box – don’t really need the lid for support.
[*]Must be able to handle a canvas ( stretched paper over wooden square dowels ) – this is more in line with what pochade boxes are aimed at. Thinking I can clamp at the bottom and not have to do a support at the top.
[*]Close to working surface, reaching over is bad – prefer french easels here
[*]Dual sources of water, wide opening to fit a 3″ brush or bigger is better.
[*]Water water water – spray bottle and access to more water. Also sponges and rags, sham wow, portable fan, anything to control water and how wet or dry the surface is.
[*]Palette in center and on the front – like to have tubes as I go so i just have as much paint on the palette as I need to use, can either setup cakes ( don’t want to do that ) or I need the tubes in specific spots so they I am not looking thru them constantly. Watercolor tubes are pretty small compared to other mediums, and a small drop of paint goes a long way. A soaking wet palette needs to either dry or be contained, or just left level, ideally a cover can keep each section so it does not drip into the next section, but prefer it to be able to dry out between usage.
[*]Brushes inclined down while wet – not a big deal but seems easy to make work
[*]Self contained, and I want to use mostly the same setup at home in the studio. I consider painting at home as practicing for when i go out into the field.
[*]Fold it open, start working, close it up, ready to walk away, speed of setup and teardown is critical.

( My design now has the palette flush with the top, that was a very early design decision to solve the problem I noticed that the palette is not front and center, also an issue I see with the water hanging far under the easel forcing the artist to reach a long way, don’t like that. The depth is deeper than I wanted, but then the height of my current water sources dictated that – notice my focus is on water. )

Been thinking this thru quite a bit. I keep coming back to this design, which I don’t think is something I’ve seen anyone do so far. Going to keep thinking this back and forth, but it seems like my mind is settling on this design.

The idea is that the ideal is the pivoting tripod head, just like a camera, to support the canvas, but instead of just using a tripod, it uses a short foot long pole coming out of a pochade type box. This can be used as is on a lap or a desk, or it could have it’s own tripod attachment or legs. It attacks the problem of french easels of having storage behind the canvas by making the canvas go above the base, and it also solves the problem of being too far back by mounting in the center or near the front instead of the back.

This is solely intended to show the structure in a simple manner, the shelf can be more complicated in shape, even a box – I was thinking the thicker box like in my initial post, and I’d assume there would be a lid/box that opens so all the parts can go inside, but it can be simply a shelf like this which would probably make it light as possible and still do everything.

This is in effect almost the same result as a shelf/box that hangs on the tripod via hooks, in concept some of my thinking is that I can put things in between the male screw and the female attachment, but the advantage in my mind here is that this can be placed directly on the ground or on a desk, and then I have a fully pivoting drawing surface, and I can still put a box/shelf on the tripod if desired.

This is for all intents a rough and unfinished prototype. This is made out of furring strips ( 3 of them, which are heavily knotted 1.5″x.5″x8′ cheap lumber which run $1 each ) and a piece of plywood ( $6 for a 4’x2′ sheet ). The hardware came off of another box. I glued the furring strips to make a 3 inch wide piece. The hinges were $3 for a pair ( probably going to reuse those for the next version )

The pieces were for the most part warped, so the lid does not line up very well, but by getting better pieces ( for example 1/8″ poplar boards ) and I adjusted the sizes so they are simpler. I am not exactly a expert carpenter, so a lot of this is just figuring out how to do things. Not even trying to do things modular yet, just get a feel for the size and weight, overall this seems both functional and stable as it’s attached.

The hooks on the back I made with a mitre saw, very carefully dropping the blade on two small blocks which I had clamped together. I then carefully made a quarter inch slot down the middle of the hook in which I glued a piece of board to fit into a notch on the back of the box. I had a lot of trouble doing those notches in the back of the box these fit into, actually had to redo it twice before I made a fence to control the speedsaw which I was using. The hooks are adjustable to the desired width by tightening the screws, going to get some screws I can hand tighten later.

The brush holder on the left I am pretty happy with, and very simple. I setup a strip of wood ( another furring strip ) and took all my drill bits and drilled sequentially example holes just so I could determine which bit to use. Then I took my brushes and placed them inside the holes to size them, and once I knew the correct sizes I just drilled holes in a board. When i carry it ( it’s opposite the handle ) the brushes are upright. To hold them right it seems I need a deep hole, if it’s just in a thin piece they tend to rattle around.

The center portion is intended to be drawers with a shelf on top. Kind of thinking I can set this up on whatever table I am sitting at, and set the canvas/paper in the center or just on top. Not sure on the sizing, it seems very big, and thinking I can make it less deep and not as tall – perhaps even 8″ by 20″ instead of 12″ by 24″ for the final one, but then I am still editing what I bring on plein air trips. If I can find shorter water jars at the grocery store ( I only use a inch of water as it is ), I can make the whole thing a lot shorter.

Current revision of prototype.

This is far too heavy, but is really helping me learning the tasks of carpentry. Quite a bit of the issues are using cordless power tools and not being able to get perfectly square cuts on larger pieces, so I’ve opted to use sizes as is of the furring strips. I have a mitre saw which does smaller pieces. This does go on the easel but it’s obviously at the limits of what is reasonable. Will probably do very controlled testing on an easel, but treat this more as a table top supply box, perhaps fitting something on top to act as a desk – mainly at home.

One of the things I wanted was a drawer with slots for my tubes of paint and other similar supplies. I actually am finding this drawer is more key to everything and I could have just added brushes and water to this and been very complete.

An issues I ran into, is the drawer is meant to be lifted sideways as the handle is on the far right of the box, so all the supplies tumble to one side of the drawer when I want them to stay in position. I was trying to solve this and came up with a board to fit over the paints themselves, which led to something I think will end up being used by me for years, as I realized this seems like a palette. ( gotta love serendipity ) This effectively negates the need for two drawers.

This palette has spaces to hold a smaller jar of water, holes for brushes, a cheapy type plastic palette tray, and I made it so it has notches to hold watercolor cakes ( thank you again Harold ). I don’t even really use cakes but am thinking of getting more pans and focusing on that. I am thinking this is actually my entire studio in my hand and all I need except for the brushes. To an extent this accident is probably what I build the next prototype around.

I really like the brush holder ( it slides out and is going to live on my desk regardless ), the arrangement of the water on the right, a flat area on top which has velcro and can be used as a work area, and the drawer seems core. There seems like a lot of unused space though around these things which can be reduced.

My task now is twofold.

One I need to find good wood to construct a new version, using hardwood sold as hobby boards ( they have some oak that seems very strong sold as 4 foot long boards, all quarter inch thick, in sizes ranging from 1.5 to 4 inches so I don’t have to cut down long lengths. Just a bit on the pricey side after I did all this for about $10 including glue, and single boards are $8-10 ). I also want to get some better hardboard plywood, I am using material designed for drawers. This should by itself decrease the weight by half.

Second I need to edit this design so it’s a third to half as big. I am thinking I can find shorter water jars, put the squeeze bottles perhaps in the lid, and make the height of the bottom about 2 inches, and the top 2 inches thick, perhaps rethinking the brush holder so it’s thinner and using less wood. I might even just do an alternate so it just is more of a carrier for the palette and a few brushes and water for when I want to be really light. Also think I can make it not as deep.

Overall I am happy with it’s overall shape, and will just use it to paint for a while and get a better feeling for what it’s practical problems are besides weight.

This feels a lot like writing poetry, you want to be more concise, but you don’t want to remove that extra word because it’s important to the meaning until eventually you figure out how to say the same thing in a simpler way.