Outdoor painting @ Tres Pistoles Trail

 I joined a local group of plein air painters who goes to various locations around Albuquerque this past week.  

It gave me a chance to test out my LEDER EASEL. 

I bought this on Etsy, and it works pretty well, but you can save the maker the fees and buy it off his website. 

 Here's my set up at "Tres Pistoles" trailhead, or as the locals call it, "Three Gun".

 This is the scene I chose.  I love the path, I love paths and roads. I love the shadows. I love the Sandias in the background. 

 I set up my board, pre-toned with transparent red oxide, and blocked in the scene.  For the sky, I chose magnesium blue. It wasn't a good choice. It's too transparent on top of that red oxide. 

 After roughing it in, I took is back to my home to work on it. Here's the end of the first day.

Eventually, I felt like it was too "cool", including the sky, and decided I wanted to warm it up. I also felt it lacked some vibrancy, so I used some colors with higher chroma.  I also have noticed that for all its brilliance, morning highlights tend to be cooler than afternoon highlights.  At least, that's how it seems to me.  

Later, I put cerulean in the sky, and scumbled the brush around the sky again with unbleached titanium for the clouds.  

I think this is finished but I may add some more shadows back in on the trail. 

I decided to call it Tres Pistoles Uno, because I'm pretty sure there's going to be more than one Tres Pistoles painting. 

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DIY non-leaking portable brush cleaning jar from canning jars

 I like the silicoil brush-cleaning jars.  I do.  However, I'm not over the moon about them.

• They are not always leak-proof. When I travel, even if it's by car, I need more reassurance than that.
• The design is somewhat in efficient in that I can't remove the coil.
• I'm not 100% convince that the metal coil helps get the paint out from between the bristles as well as, say, a screen might.

And then last week, when I was making cold brew coffee with my favorite setup I got to thinking about what a great brush washer that would make, if only it wasn't a quart large.  The screen would allow me to scrub the brush bristles gently.  Also, I like to dip my palette scraper in there from time to time and there's no room to do that with the silicoil jar. I was also thinking about all the canning jars I have.  I even have silicone lids for a number of them. 

So, I purchased a very small cold-brew maker, one that fits into a pint or quart jar. 

I also purchased this small tea infuser, just for fun, to see if it would work in a 1/2 pint jar for travel.

I looked up information about how silicone might react with gamsol, and it turns out that it might just melt it.  So, I just used the lids that come with the jars. I have a million of these flat lids lying around.

Here's the result: 

The whole thing sits in a old stainless can bowl (sniff, I miss my kitties) to catch drops.

If I have any problems with it, I'll add to this post. So far, though, it's been over a month and it's working well.  

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