-Inbuilt palette and easel, with space for materials
-Lightweight and easy to use.
-Made from untreated maple wood.
-Forested from from sustainable forest.
-Takes three 8" x 6" (200mm x 150mm) boards.
-Closed box measures 230 x 180 x 75mm
-Tripod bracket available.
-Built to last but weighs less then 1kg.
Budget Boxes....
If you love to paint outdoors but
don't see why you should have to spend a fortune,
you might be interested in something from the
Abbey Easels range.
I bought one of their "Compact Pochade" 8x6
boxes and found it to be excellent value for money
at just £39.
It's similar to the one above by Red Top, but the
Abbey is predominantly made from soft pine. In
practical everyday terms, there's virtually no
difference. After a few months of use outdoors,
they'll both end up being knocked around a bit and
you'll stop trying to keep them pristine. When I
ordered mine, I asked the maker to include a small
division to keep the brushes separate from the
paints and it turns out that this was a great idea
(even though I say so myself). The standard 37mm
paint tubes fit perfectly in the top section,
leaving lots of space for brushes, palette-knives,
pencils, in the bottom section. I strongly recommend
you ask for this option.
Click Photos To Enlarge In A New Window
Once you've opened the box, you will notice that it
can accommodate three 8" x 6" panels in the lid
which is great for painting multiple pictures on a
day out. It's effectively a wet canvas carrier. The
lid which covers your paints and brushes, doubles up
as a palette and you'll be pleased to hear that you
can keep your wet mixes on the palette while you
carry the pochade to your next destination without
fear of it touching your painting. It's also worth
noting that the palette will slide to the left or
right.
For this particular pochade I chose to furnish it
with Daler Rowney System 3 brushes instead of
the usual hogs. The brushes fitted into the pochade
with no problem except for the wide flat, which I
cut down slightly. Finally, I should mention that
the box comes with a long leather shoulder-strap.
Personally, I never use these, so I cut mine down to
form a simple leather "handle" instead.
So, overall, I'm extremely pleased with the pochade.
It's basic construction using cheap materials is
perfectly suited to the task and subsequently, costs
are kept to a minimum. Delivery was swift and
customer-support is exemplary. Don't delay
- order one today!
Product Rating
Up
Market....
Not everyone likes to paint at 6 x 8. Some people
prefer to use larger canvases and for that you'll
need something different. There's a company called "Open
Box M" in
America which designs and manufacturers some amazing
kit! They use the finest materials and build
everything by hand. Their products range from a tiny
6x8 palm box, to a juicy 11x14 tripod-mounted
pochade box. Personally, I opted for the 10x12 model
which is nice and compact but still gives me a lot
of options. So let's take a closeup of that
particular model (below).
I'll
start by saying that the OBM's
are expensive for UK buyers. Apart from the
fact that you
need
to pay for the quality build and materials, you also
have to pay for the carriage charges and then stump
up some import duty when the taxman spots it at the
docks. A kit like the one described below will set
you back around £360. If you're the kind of
person who prefers Timex to Breitlings, this sort of
kit will be of no interest, LOL. Having
said that, I got real lucky when I found this kit on
Ebay at a tiny fraction of the cost. The seller had
bought the kit and had never found time to use it so
she decided to auction it. Unfortunately for her,
interest was extremely low for some odd reason and
bidding never went higher than £45.
The
first thing that you notice about the OMB Pochade is
the quality. It even makes the Jullian look
cheap in comparison. A beautiful black walnut and a
smooth satin, oiled finish. Mmmmm. It even smells
good! The box comes with a high quality, comfortable
shoulder strap in case you don't wish to use the
traditional suitcase type handle. Weighing in at
6lbs, you'll probably want to use the strap if
you're going to be walking any distance and don't
forget that you're going to need to carry a tripod
too. If you want to travel real light, you could of
course remove the pochade panel from its box and
stick it in a rucksack with your brushes and paints.
Some
"Pochade Purists" might consider anything large than
6x8" to be too big to be classed as a true pochade,
but to me it's all about Plein Air
painting and if you use a small panel and brushes or
a large canvas and palette-knives, it's all the
same. You're out there capturing the moment, feeling
the passion of painting, colours and light, and most
of all, enjoying yourself. Although much
bigger than the petite Jullian, the 10x12" OBM setup
is still pretty compact. Everything is stored neatly
inside the box and the whole thing is quick to set
up. It takes about 5 minutes to get ready
and considering that you're going to be there for a
couple of hours, that can hardly be called time
consuming.
It
should be pointed out that although my OBM Pochade
is a 10x12" model, you can of course paint
panels/canvases of much smaller or much larger
dimensions! The unique (and patented) panel-holder
will securely grip anything from 5 inches wide up to
a staggering 18 inches wide. Now that's
flexibility! Another plus-point is that it
will grip either flat oil-panels or traditional
stretcher-mounted canvases. So why call it a 10x12"
then? It's because 10x12 is the maximum wet-panel
size that can be stored inside the box. But don't
think that it can only store 10x12's. The adjustable
panel-carrier will adjust down to much smaller sizes
too. In fact, it can even hold two different size
boards at once. Real clever design work has gone
into these pochades. No detail is left
untouched - even the brass accessory tray has a
small folded lip to make it easy to extract from the
storage area. It's a small thing, but without it, it
would be an annoyance.
When
you open up the box, you see that the pochade panel
is stored in the lower section while the wet-panel
carrier is stored in the lid. The carrier isn't just
placed in the lid loose either - it sits very neatly
in a couple of runners which allow it to tip forward
to aid extraction or insertion of the panels,
without tipping out completely. Neat! When you
remove the pochade from the base of the box, you can
access the three storage compartments where your
paint and brushes/knives are kept. The centre
compartment is made from a brass liner which is the
obvious place for the brushes. In the front
compartment I store my 37mm paint tubes and in the
rear compartment I store the spare brass-tray which
fits on the side of the pochade. This holds my most
frequently used paints.
Once
the pochade panel has been attached to your tripod,
it's time to open it up and set the tilt angle to
suit your position/stance. I'm very pleased
to report that OBM's patented bracket works superbly
well (far, far better than the Jullian) in securing
the panel at your desired angle. There is no
movement at all even when pushing quite hard on your
canvas with a knife or brush. The whole setup is
very well thought out and other than drilling some
holes in the palette-extension piece for brushes, I
can think of nothing that the OBM Pochade lacks.
Highly
recommended!
