Plein Air Materials List

If you’re painting with pastels, you’ll need the following:

-An assortment of soft pastels, at least 24 colors. Good brands to use would include Rembrandt, Sennelier, Daler-Rowney, Unison, Schmincke, and Winsor & Newton, among others. I would avoid extremely hard pastels like NuPastel just because they’re harder to work with in the field.

-A few pastel pencils.

-Pastel paper. My favorite is Sennelier LaCarte, but it’s water-sensitive, so if it rains, your picture is toast. Canson Mi-Tientes, Wallis, and Art Spectrum all work well, as does cold-pressed watercolor paper. Just choose a paper with sufficient tooth to hold the pastel.

-A board for the paper.

-Paper towels or rags.

-Stumps or tortillions.

-Some sort of portable easel. A French easel is ideal, of course, but pricey. There are full-sized aluminum tripod easels that work well, or even a table easel if there are picnic tables in the area (though that’s hard to count on). In a worst-case scenario, bring a folding chair and just use your board.

If you’re painting with oils, you’ll need the following:

-A large tube of white (titanium or flake); small tubes of black, raw umber, burnt umber, raw sienna or yellow ochre, chromium oxide green or sap green, phthalocyanine blue, ultramarine blue, cadmium red light, alizarin crimson, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow. If you don’t have these exact colors, don’t worry about it: bring what you have.

-Paint thinner in a jar you can get your brush into.

-Canvas board, stretched canvas, or a pad of canvas paper. I wouldn’t work on a size much larger than 12” x 16” for an outdoor class.

-A handful of brushes ranging from a #2 up to a #12. I myself prefer flats and brights, but you might like filberts or rounds. Bring one palette knife as well.

-Paper towels or rags.