Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Hand Held Portable Palette

At the 2016 USk Manchester Symposium Mark Leibowitz presented a number of unique products and ideas geared to enhance our sketching experience. I am please Mark chose to include the Field Easel Art Bag in his presentation but it was a version of the hand held portable palette that caught my eye. The one Mark demonstrated was similar to what you see above except it did not have a thumb hold but instead had Velcro on the back that adhered to a wrist band the artist was wearing.

As many of you know I stand using my field easel art bags platform to hold my journal while I sketch. There is a flex band at the front of the bags platform which will hold a small watercolor kit like the ones above. It works but I will be the first to admit it has its limitations - it crowds the platform making it somewhat challenging to effectively paint. When I saw Marks wrist band mounted palette the light came on! I thought, I can make one of those, only I will make it so I can hold it in my hand. What you see in the images above is the product in use. Having the watercolor kit affixed to the foam-core and the water container in place allows more freedom of movement and makes painting under any circumstance a whole lot easier. The neat thing is it really works and it's easy and inexpensive to make.

Windsor & Newton's portable watercolor box and Maria Coryell Martins unique pocket palette are ideally suited for this application.

2 comments:

  1. In my opinion, Coroplast is a better material than foam core for this application. It is plastic coated so not effected by spilled water. I think it's also cheaper than foam core and more durable. You can get coroplast at a hardware store. It's what yard signs are made of. In fact, you could just hijack an old used political sign!

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