Necessity is the Mother....

My Setup in the Luxembourg Gardens

We all know the saying that "Necessity is the mother of invention." I have always loved this saying. It's a testament to human imagination and to the things we can concoct when there's a pressing need. Do you remember Apollo 13? After the spaceship was crippled by an explosion, the NASA crew and astronauts figured out how to use a mish-mash of random  materials to hook up a carbon dioxide removal system. Amazing!

I would not dare compare my efforts to those of the astronauts. But I recently did some improvising of my own, which allowed me to paint on a trip to Paris. I had promised my husband that this trip would be VACATION--no painting! But after ten days of withdrawal


from the easel, all the while seeing beautiful and inspiring paintings in museums, I could not hold out any longer. I had sneaked a tiny little pochade box into my luggage, along with four brushes and a few tubes of water miscible oil paints. I had a pad of watercolor paper that I had gessoed, so that it would accept oil paint. And that's about it.

Since I didn't have an easel, I had to find subjects with places to rest my pochade box. Turns out that those green metal chairs in the public gardens work pretty well (see top photo). Granted, there's some lower back pain involved after leaning over for a hour or two, but who's counting?!  

Even better easel substitutes were the walls along the quais of the Seine. Using those, I could stand up to paint. But I had to hold onto the pochade box with one hand while I painted with the other. (By the way, thanks to Artwork Essentials for the nifty little pochade box--no larger than a laptop computer).

I discovered that some of my paint had dried out over the years (I quit using water miscible oils a long time ago). So I was down to just four colors plus white. No problem--I'm used to a limited palette! Not usually this limited, but I could make it work.

I didn't have a board to tape my paper to. But I realized that the cardboard back on the pad of paper was stiff enough to serve the purpose. I had some rubber bands, so I used them to secure the paper on the "board". 

"Pantheon, Seem from Luxembourg Gardens"
14 x 14, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2017

Voila, there you have it: all the ingredients for a few impromptu painting sessions! I was only able to complete small studies, but stay tuned for larger works derived from the studies. You can see one of the studio paintings above. It's based on the study you see in the top photo. Expect more scenes from gardens and along the water...