Painting on the go

We’re just nearing the end of our three months travelling in our caravan.

Do you enjoy painting while you're travelling?

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time away with my paints while we’re travelling the North Queensland Coast of Australia. We completely changed our itinerary when a long-term space became available in the beautiful coastal town of Yeppoon and ended up staying for six weeks. That’s the longest we’ve ever been in the one spot and found it very relaxing and just completely chilled out.

I managed to get 4-5hrs of painting done nearly every day, which is far more than I expected.

I posted a blog early on in our trip and these are the supplies I listed as bringing with me:

- Table easel

- Tablet

- Watercolour paper

- Backing board

- Acrylic paints and mediums

- Brushes

- Pencils

- Stay wet palette

- Water container

- Paper towel

- Apron

This is how my supplies worked out:

- Table easel – was really invaluable and worked a treat. It even managed to hold the cricket bat I painted for Will’s fundraising :)

- Tablet – I used this a fair bit, however discovered I need an anti-glare screen to enable me to use it outside. When I ran out of the reference photos I took with me I had to move into the caravan to paint so I could see the screen on the tablet.

- Watercolour paper – I gessoed three sheets of paper before leaving home and needed to do more while we were on the road, which wasn’t really a problem except I ran out of gesso and had to buy more!

- Backing board – I took three backing boards with me, which I needed because I left one with a buyer at Bowen which left me with two to work with so I could gesso two sheets at the same time.

- Acrylic paints and mediums. I ran out of a couple of mediums and had to buy more, together with white and blue paint. I only planned to paint turtles but think I will bring more paints next time in case I decide to change subject matter. I also had to buy some satin spray varnish for the cricket bat and the painting I donated to Ocean Artists Society.

- Brushes – I only had to buy one extra brush to use on the cricket bat and found I really only used three brushes consistently. Still it was good to have the others just in case.

- Pencils – woops … forgot the pencil sharpener!

- Stay wet palette – invaluable!

- Water container – forgot to pack this so thank goodness for Bunnings.

- Paper towel – I used a fair bit of paper towel but we use it in the caravan so that wasn’t a problem.

- Apron – this was used along with an old towel.

There were a few other things I packed that weren’t mentioned above:

- Small clip-on daylight lamp - was invaluable for painting in the van!

- Water sprayer

- Ruler

- Proportional divider

- Cotton buds and cotton balls

- Palette knife – I actually bought another one on a trip to an art supply store because I enjoy using them for painting some of the water backgrounds for my turtles.

I’m now looking forward to our return home and back to my studio. I have a large canvas seascape waiting to be finished on my return and then I’ll be concentrating on works for an exhibition.