Santa Ynez River and the Large Pochade

The members of PACC met yesterday to have our monthly paint out down at the Santa Ynez river just south of the town of Solvang. It is a great spot to paint but was much better about 2 months ago when all of the trees were in full Fall colors still. I was out of 9"x12" panels so I decided to break in my pochade box that I built to handle 12"x16" panels. Had to run down to the garage early in the morning to make an adjustment for the mounting plate of my tripod but that went smoothly. I also drilled to holes in the sides to mount my brush caddie too....can't do without that. Some gusty winds helped to evaluate the pochade box in a real life situation but that puppy hing in there and worked just fine.

I need a wet panel carrier for 12"x16" panels though so I'll make one and probably bungy it to the pochade box when hiking in or out. If you look at the small pic of my other pochade box, the 9"x12" you can see the size difference by looking at the brush caddie. On the 9x12 box it is almost flush with the top of the box....it is about 3" shorter on the bigger pochade box. The only drawback to this larger pochade box is that it won't fit into my backpack so it gets carried by hand. Maybe I'll make some sort of handle for it. It's not that big of a deal since I only paint on larger sizes like this once in a while. Overall though it worked great. If you are interested in building a pochade box check out the link to the right for Jim Serretts blog....he's the man with the plan.