New Brushes

Wow, received a sale catalogue from Jerry's Artarama not long ago and they had a great sale on hog hair filberts and flats. That's what I use, mostly filberts but flats are great for straight lines when doing boats, roof eaves, etc. 14 brushes for $35...not bad at all. They are cheapo brushes but with some quality in them. I don't use expensive brand name brushes since I'm pretty hard on them....so many swishes in the turpentine when cleaning them and they've had it. I've used a good brush cleaner and conditioner before but you know I don't really like spending time fixing brushes, I'd rather paint with them until they've had it and then I either keep them in a seperate can until I need that beat up brush for wild natural grasses that go every which way.
I'm not real big on buying the most expensive stuff for art since art really isn't about what you create it with....it's about what you sign your name to....not what you used to sign it. I know....lots of artists can give you all kinds of details about why they buy expensive stuff. Seems to me they are just going to pass that on to somebody and guess who that is?
Impressionist painters used to paint on wood scrapped from old packing crates when times were tough money wise...you and I can't afford one of those paintings so that's the lesson...it's not about what you use to make a painting, it's about how well that painting looks to the person who buys it or just stands there and enjoys looking at it. My French Companion I built from scrap pieces of wood in my garage and two brass plated piano hinges bought at Home Depot cost me about $6 to make and the paint for some great paintings have been mixed right there....and it still works fine and will be around loooong after I'm dead and gone and hopefully in the hands of some other painter.

 My French Companion is well seasonsed now.....

  

A French Companion

A homemade French Companion I built and use a lot!

About a year ago I decided to build a French Companion for my French Easel. I was tired of using just the provided palette that came with the easel. Everytime I folded the beast up I'd end up with paint on me plus I had to remember to keep the paint flat enough on the palette to not hit the frame when closing the door to fold it all up. As for the difference between a French Mistress and a French Companion all I could tell is one is larger than the other and the spelling:)
A Companion made sense since it not only gave me a larger mixing surface but it kept the paint away from my clothes, was easy to carry and gave me two side panels to sit things on like brushes, turps containers, knives and the mandatory cup of coffee that I like to paint with. The only problem was the price of a store bought one....wasn't insanely high but I just didn't want to paint that much money for something I'm going to slop paint all over not to mention banging around in the truck when heading to painting locations. I'd build one! I'm cheap labor.

Building the companion was easy. The companion is just 3 flat boxes tied together with brass piano hinges. I used flat pieces of scrap thin Luan ply from that I had bought at home depot for another project. The frame was just a 2x4 cut down to size. Brass piano hinge from Home Depot too. Slapped some orange oil on it and that's it. No tricky cuts, no varnished finish, no oak or cherry....I'm just going to ruin it eventually with paint all over it. It probably cost me all of maybe $10 to build. I love working with wood so it was a lot of fun for me building it, (thanks Mr Danielson, my Blair High Woods teacher for 4 years of fun).

Of all my painting gear I love this one the best. Works great, looks fine and does exactly what it was built for....keeps my clothes paint free and holds my coffee too! I like it so much I use it in the studio to mix on when working on my French Easel or my big easel. I just set it on a small metal table that I keep paint in...my taboret. It has wheels so I can roll it around from easel to easel. When I'm finished painting for the day I just fold it up and slide it in the fridge to keep the paint from drying up. When I take it on locatiuon I just wrap a bungee cord around it to keep the tops closed....I could make a latch to do that but why bother, it works just fine with a bungee cord. If you don't have one of these build one and give it a try.

Building a French Companion

Above you can see the French Companion I recently built. The French Companion is smaller than the French Mistress but they both look and do the same thing. I decided to build mine because I had the scrap wood laying around from past projects and didn't feel like waiting for the FC to be shipped had I ordered one online. At this moment the FC is on sale at ASW for $52.99.

Here is how I built mine. The panels are 3/16 Luan I had purchased a while back at Home Depot. First I cut three panels of luan. These measured 13x16 and two 13x8. Then I cut pieces of 5/8 x5/8 strips of wood to fit along the edges of the panels. These are just butt jointed, nothing fancy. The frame strips are just pine that was cut from an old piece of 2x4. I glues these to the panels and then shot in a few brads to reinforce them (you could use short finishing nails too).

I then went to Ace hardware and bought 2 12" piano hinges for $8 a piece. Once I had those I lined up the panels and installed the hinges.

 I then stained it with red oak stain and then waxed it with the Howards Feed N Wax. Here is the view of the box closed. for transport.

A view of the box open ready to be sat on the drawer of the French easel. I was going to buy some small latches to keep the doors closed but couldn't find any. I'll hunt online for those. A bungy cord will work for now.

Ready for action! It's that simple...cut panels to size, glue and nail on wood frame strips, screw on hinges, stain and wax....Use! It gives ample room now when using the French easel to lay out your paints, palette knives, turps, coffee cup, donut, and has a nice amount of room to mix paint. Very easy to build.