Packing Smart

Find out how just a few changes to your toolkit can make a positive difference to your plein air painting experience.

Packing Smart: Plein Air Painting for Beginners

Plein air painting is hard enough. It requires serious brain work, with hundreds of decisions needing to be made, often all at once. Concerns around color temperature, accurate versus expressive drawing, details, abstraction, perspective, focal point, and changing light conditions all gang up on the painter in the field. Then there are the physical challenges, from rain to heat to bugs and animals of all kinds — including the type that might park a truck blocking the view, or steer a picturesque boat out of the marina (and out of your composition). One might be tempted to push against all these obstacles with as many helpful pieces of gear as possible.

But if carrying all that equipment to the location burns too much precious energy, the artist may feel a bit spent before even setting up. Likewise, at the end of a plein air painting session, that equipment might seem heavier, given the physical and mental exertion painting requires. The solution is to pack lightly.

A minority of plein air painters scoff at such talk, loading up their wheeled suitcases with anything and everything. Whatever works, right? But most of us want to minimize how much we carry. Easy answers abound, and tips are abundant. But Philadelphia oil painter Sarah Baptist has a great idea for the first step. “Really, it’s about thinking,” she says. “What do I really need? It’s about cutting out the crap that feeds our insecurities. Then it’s about making sure that what you do take is lightweight and fits into a comfortable, light backpack.”

Where to Start

Most everyone recommends using a backpack for plein air painting. They can be easier on your back and shoulders, and technological innovations have made them even lighter and more ergonomic than your father’s knapsack. In a sense, the backpack will dictate how much gear you’ll carry. Many backpacks have a system for attaching things on the outside, and artists may use one of their free hands to carry something else, such as a painting carrier. If the outing requires a long or strenuous hike, a backpack with a rigid frame can make a huge difference in comfort.

Lightweight easels start with the rather cumbersome French half-easel and end with some of the lightest aluminum easels on the market — some weighing as little as three pounds. Baptist and Colorado painter Philip Alexander Carlton both favor the lightweight aluminum easels, while Nika Meyers, a Colorado watercolorist who has won several FKT (Fastest Known Time) hiking records in the Rocky Mountains, just tapes watercolor paper down on cardboard with blue painter’s tape and sits on the ground to work.

And, of course, plenty of plein air painters come up with their own rig based on their wishes, processes, and bank accounts. A typical hack is to have a simple mast attachment for a tripod to provide a way to hold the painting surface, then hang a tray or board on the two front legs of the tripod to accommodate paints and palette.

Baptist cut 1/2-inch plywood into a shape that hangs on her tripod and offers a horizontal space for her painting palette and other gear. She recommends getting accustomed to a limited color palette (“no more than seven colors,” she says) and carrying two or three rags instead of lugging around a roll of paper towels. In addition, she carries only about six brushes when plein air painting.

Your Plein Air Painting Medium Matters

Aaron Schuerr’s packing decisions start with a choice about media — the Montana artist is proficient in both oils and pastels. His choice is almost always … both. “Every time I pack for a plein air show, I vow to settle on one medium — either oil or pastel, but not both. Then, at the last minute, I pack both media. I’m not saying it makes any sense, but I like the freedom to switch media. It does mean extra luggage and weight. To that end, I’ve switched to using a Dakota Deluxe Travel Box, the smaller size. It’s sturdy and I can pack just enough pastels to work for most subjects. I strap it onto my Strada Mark II palette — not exactly a light option, but it allows me to use a mast and palette system for both media.”

Pastels may be easy to set up, with a quick start time compared to wet media, but pastelists have to face the excruciating decision of what sticks to take with them. Schuerr says careful forethought is the answer. “Perhaps the most important consideration is not the setup, but the palette,” he says. “I break my pastels in half and organize them by color, with careful thought given to value, temperature, and hue. From dark blues I work toward blue-violet and turquoise. I arrange greens according to value and temperature, making sure to have warm and cool pastels for each value. From there, my palette moves to orange, warm darks, and reds, and finishes with neutrals.

“Though most of my palette stays the same, I adjust it according to the landscape and season. I find I never have enough, but the limited palette forces me to look for color harmony, to find ways to make color function in a way that feels right, even if it doesn’t exactly match the landscape. With color relativity in mind, I can get away with a limited palette and not feel restricted.”

John David Phillips lives in Grand Junction, Colorado, which means he can drive in virtually any direction and quickly find stunning subject matter. He often used to hike into the backcountry to paint in oil, so even though his back slows him down a bit now, he’s an old hand at plein air work and knows how to pack efficiently.

Phillips paints on linen affixed to panels, which he finds to be the best compromise between surface quality and weight. His preferred size of surface is 11 x 14 inches because it’s big enough for him to paint with the large arm gestures he finds comfortable and fruitful, yet small enough to complete in a typical plein air session. He packs solvents in a Ball jar with a sealable lid; on site, he wraps a sturdy wire around the rim of the jar so he can hang it on his easel. After a few days of painting, the artist decants the sediment out of the solvent and reuses it. He saves the sediment and tones his homemade frames with it.

Don’t Skimp on These Top Tips

One of Phillips’ main tips for packing light is to not try to do without an umbrella to put your palette and surface in shade while painting. “Use an umbrella, even though it adds weight,” he urges. “It’s painful to the eyes to paint in bright light, and it skews your color sensitivity. Also, you will go down the wrong road in terms of value if you don’t have your setup shaded.”

Carlton has advice for managing paints when making up a light-weight pack. For colors used more heavily, such as white or ultramarine, consider packing small backup tubes. For the overall palette, simply squeeze out piles of each color on your palette big enough to last a painting session and take the palette. But he advises against scraping up all of the old paint on the palette when preparing your gear for a plein air excursion. “Unless you’re painting a very large scene, you don’t need to bring all your paint. I would minimize weight by preloading most colors to the palette. My palette is full of old dry paint — not because I’m lazy, but because hiking a few miles with paint on a squeaky-clean palette will leave your paint sliding all over, and it’s a mess. Paint sticks to a junky surface much better.”

Watercolorist Meredith Nemirov lives in New Mexico and travels extensively to paint. Like Baptist, she finds that a thin piece of plywood with a notch cut in one of the long sides works well for hanging on the legs of a tripod and holding her palette and other painting gear. She uses a system (called Valpod) designed by a family in Idaho. “It’s the perfect easel for watercolor painting outdoors,” she says. “It is so lightweight that I can carry it with one hand, yet it’s still very sturdy. Unfortunately, they don’t make it anymore.”

Nemirov rounds out her full plein air painting kit with a 10 x 14-inch block of Arches 140-lb. cold-pressed paper, about six brushes, two plastic cups, a water bottle, and the usual miscellany. She also has a smaller kit consisting of the watercolor block of paper, a small watercolor paint kit that holds about 14 pans of paint, four travel brushes, graphite pencil, eraser, and a collapsible water container.

The Minimalist Approach

Meyers’ “heavy” kit is probably lighter than most people’s light kit. The avid hiker automatically thinks light, as evidenced by her plein air rig. “As someone who has always carried a watercolor set while exploring the outdoors, I do have a few tips for an ultralight plein air setup,” she says. “Even if I’m heading out for a day hike to create a larger painting or wanting to create studies along a multi-day adventure, my setup is pretty light. I don’t have an easel but instead bring a sit pad and a cardboard backing. I use a bungee cord to strap paintings onto the back of my backpack.

“If I’m working on a larger painting, I roll the paper and put it in a shipping tube wrapped in plastic and just paint on the ground. I do have a lightweight backpacking umbrella that I take to protect from sun and any rain I may experience. I try to pack as simply as possible without sacrificing quality.”

Her light kit is about as minimal as it could be. For a long trip or “a backpacking adventure,” Meyers carries a refillable water brush, a small travel-sized paint set, a journal with watercolor paper, and pens and pencils.

Is it worth it to minimize a plein air kit, or have a second kit that emphasizes lightness and portability? A thousand times, yes. “Try to keep it as light as possible,” says Phillips. “It’s going to get you out more, and make you a whole lot happier.”

Editor’s Note: Join us for the 6th Annual Plein Air Live online art conference, featuring Kathleen Hudson, Kevin Macpherson, Kami Mendlik, and many more! The event takes place November 6-8, 2025, with an Essential Techniques Day on November 5. Learn more at PleinAirLive.com.

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