9. Plein Air Hawaii Gear Guide, Part 1: Paints, Mediums, and Brushes
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Introduction
I have been making artwork from the landscape and teaching Plein Air on location in Hawaii for nearly 15 years and I’m still learning something new every time I head out into the field because not only are conditions always changing - weather, landscape, tools, skills - but also so am I. As, of course, are you. Heraclitus said you never step into the same stream twice; therefore, please use this gear guide more philosophically rather than prescriptively. Some of the gear below you’ll use for certain situations, and others you won’t use at all. Each time you go out will present new challenges and surprises. Ultimately, your Plein Air practice is about artful adaptation.
This gear guide is separated into five parts and will cover the following three related topics in each part:
That means I will be introducing and explaining the types of gear you might wish to have, but not necessarily the exact brands or where to get them. Any links in this article are for informational purposes, and I have no affiliation with them whatsoever.
Please note your use or non-use of any of these products or any of these types of products out in the field in changing, and possibly even dangerous, conditions is at your own risk.
One more thing: first and foremost, this is a guide about fine art painting gear for the tropics. As far as I know, no such other guide currently exists in print or online.
1. Paints, Mediums, and Brushes
TL; DR: When en plein air tropicale, use oil on panel, natural-hair brushes, and real spirits.
Paints
My background in the science of Art History with special focus on painting materials and their conservation, as well as years on the ground making, teaching, and observing students and colleagues paint throughout the islands of Hawaii leads me to one conclusion:
Traditional, single-pigment, oil-based colors are the best paints for outdoor use in warm, windy, sunny climates like the tropics.
Yes, you can use pastels (oil or dry). Yes, watercolor is just fine. Of course, you can extend the open time (slow down the drying speed) of acrylics, and on and on, but I’m not here to negotiate, referee, or parse those arguments. Let’s skip to the end… buy or switch to oils for outdoors; you’ll be happier.
The reason is simple: flexibility.
With tropical weather, sunlight, wind velocity, and a latitude of 21 degrees, Hawaii makes oils behave differently than, say, California, or southern France. Outdoors, with a few knots of wind and sun that is brighter and UV that is more intense, oils’ open time (the time that you can paint with them before they dry) is shorter than either in the studio or more northern latitudes with cooler temps and lighter breezes - even with the higher humidity, as that is a relative yardstick. This flexibility is necessary because the quick-dry paint film that is created when warm air breezes past your surface covered in paint creates a rapid oxidation process where oxygen from the air bonds with the oils and hardens via polymerization at a much faster rate than elsewhere. Oils in the tropics are, therefore, with proper medium, the most flexible because even though here they act outdoors almost like acrylics do indoors, oils stay wetter longer.
Now, you can read my other posts about which colors to buy here. And which brands as well here. As far as this gear guide is concerned, buy any colors, brands and medium you like, but especially three blues and a magenta: Phthalo, Ultramarine and Cobalt, as well as any properly bright purplish-red including a printer’s Magenta, Opera Rose, or other fucshia-like Bougainvillea pink.
You will also use a lot of white. I prefer a lead or titanium white as they are thicker, creamier and more opaque than zinc. People love zinc for its transparency. It makes lovely velaturas. Hawaii’s rainscapes are the kind of haze that zinc can help illustrate. Here’s another reason: our clouds need body that won’t crack, and titanium does that better than zinc. If you’re in the mood - go for a good titanium-zinc white blend. There’s even a sneaky old-world white from an artisinal paintmaker in the Midwest who adds silica, blanc fixe and other ingredients, but I haven’t tried it… yet.
And speaking of the sky… the light and air here are crisp and clear because they are washed by rain from fresh tradewinds. It’s an altogether different atmosphere, and much, much bluer than anywhere else. That’s why most people who come to Hawaii think it’s spectacular. It’s like the warm fog of mainland cataracts have been lifted from their eyes and they can finally see the colors of life. Everything just looks brighter here.
Oh, now is the time for my regular admonitions: no black paints and no alkyd-based mediums. If you must buy a black, make sure it’s a carbon or bone black that is translucent, but honestly, black doesn’t occur in nature as most students imagine it. Any color you think is black is made of the rest of your colors. Shadows, lowlights, skin tones, and even lava are all made best without a pure, or printers’, black. In students’ hands black paint invariably leads to ashen, sallow, and otherwise dingy paintings. As for alkyd: just no.
Mediums
The oil-friendly media to use for tropical Plein Air are simple: spirit, oil, and varnish.
For spirits, I like turpentine, spirit of canada balsam, spike lavender and/or rosemary oil. You can find them all at Robert’s Art Treehouse. Climb on up, there’s cookies.
For oils, I use linseed, poppy and/or walnut oil.
For varnish… well, that’s another article. In short: any compatible, reversible varnish is recommended for oil colors. Damar is always oil-friendly, and any UV-blocking, reversible synthetic polymer is also acceptable. Some people like to mix varnish into their mediums when painting in the studio. I do not recommend varnish in oil mediums for plein air painting in Hawaii. The chemical structure of liquified varnish in mediums acts as a siccative - a drier - and also enhances oxidation - film development - and therefore is unwelcome in tropical alla prima plein air painting. In short, wait until after your plein air paintings dry to varnish them. If you’re going to use varnish as part of your medium with oils - either as a plein air rebel, or for studio work, then pick a friendly one like damar. It likes oil colors, and is also compatible with Spike Lavender oil. If you’re going to use varnish just as a topcoat, then you can use a reversible polymer with UV protection designed for acrylics or oils both by Golden.
Protecting gouache, watercolor and pastel is best achieved by putting them under protective glass rather than spraying a topcoat, varnish or other surface treatment.
As for other painting mediums…. Acrylics need water, a wetting/extending medium, and a varnish. Watercolors and gouache just need water. And oil pastels like turpentine as well as other spirits. Dry pastels like fingers, tortillons, and chamoises. (But those aren’t mediums.)
One thing about turpentine. There’s turpentine, and then there’s turpentine. You may use store-brand, hardware-store turps. Go for it, it’ll be fine. Or you can get the good stuff. It’s priced like wine, and worth every drop. One more thing about turpentine. We can use it outside in Hawaii. As much as we want. Gallons and gallons of it. If you use it indoors, ask me first. It’s a tricky business and you want to make sure you’re in a well-ventilated space and know how to safely dispose of it, since it’s flammable as well as inflammable and has a flashpoint of 95 degrees. But I’m no flim-flam man, turps are where it’s at compared to OMS (Odorless Mineral Spirits), White Spirit, Turpenoid, and other petroleum-based paint-thinning products.
As far as essential oils of Spike Lavender, Rosemary and Spirit of Canada Balsam, look for my in-depth article here. It’s the direction I’m heading and I think you’ll likely prefer them, too. I have been using them, and they are the true essential oils of Spike Lavender and Rosemary are non-toxic and they play better with oil paints than turpentine. The Spirit of Canada Balsam is, chemically speaking, what turpentine wishes it were.
Finally, you can use recycled jars of any size. I like itty-bitty ones. Generally, you want squat or small jars that won’t tip over in the wind, as we can regularly get trades of 20 knots with gusts to 30.
Mini jam jar
1oz medium jar
Small jam/baby food jar
WARNING
TURPENTINE, ESSENTIAL OILS, OR SPIRITS.
THEY ARE POISONOUS AND LETHAL EVEN AT SMALL DOSES.
Brushes
Brushes are a highly personal thing. I have favorite brushes. I still have a few ancient brushes from when I first started painting over 30 years ago. They’re rubbed down, frozen and otherwise useless, but they’re talismanic.
I also recommend not shipping, checking, or otherwise parting with your favorite, in-use brushes when you travel. Wash them, dry them, bag them, and put them in your carry-on or hand luggage closest to you. They’re like chefs’ knives or any tradesman’s tools: hard-to-find and irreplaceable. Colors come and go. Brushes, once discovered and when taken care of properly can, in some cases, last a lifetime.
I have a mixture of sable, sable-mix, synthetic, and all kinds of natural hair brushes. There is no one definitive brush material, brand, or shape for Plein Air painters as there all all types of media and techniques. However, a good rule of thumb is to buy brushes with the proper snap. Snap is the resistance a brush head gives you when applying it to the surface of your support of choice. Sounds simple, right? Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
For example, I have one student, who shall remain nameless, who loves to sit on a milk crate and paint in elegant clothes and crank out large paintings every session. She’s hard-working and always smiling. And her brush handling is always a mess. Why? Because she grabs the first hog bristle (usually unwashed and maybe even slightly grungy) brush she sees, and uses it for all colors. She gets her one scraggly brush muddier and muddier, and by the time class is over she’s scraping the side of the one true brush to rule them all on her canvas because she’s so rushed. Guess what? Her canvases are full of energy and life! It’s never what you use, but how you use it.
I, on the other hand, am meticulous about having several of the same size, make, and shape brushes on hand every time I go out, and sometimes in different hairs - sable, synthetic and mixes. I like a medium snap: that means, when I apply pressure, the bend point is at the middle of the brush. On longer flat brushes the snap can be closer the the ferrule (or the metal crimped part holding the head to the shaft), and it feels very awkward - to me. Others love it.
Some painters use palette knives exclusively. They neither have snap nor blends. Their different alloys and weights, much like brush hair mixes, produce an altogether different result. As you can imagine, I like a medium-stiff palette knife for applying effects to any surface and for mixing colors.
The short list of brushes and tools for any Plein Air painter is simple. Just pick up one of each of the following 15 brushes. You may choose to grab one natural, one blended, one synthetic, and one rough in small, medium, large and extra-large sizes with the more expensive natural hairs being the smaller and the more affordable synthetics and hogs being the largest.
It doesn’t matter if they’re called acrylic or oil brushes, they’ll work for either. Watercolor brushes are a different animal (literally - they can be camel, mongoose, or squirrel) and you can use softer acrylic and oil paint brushes on watercolor paper for detail work. Just add watercolor mops in small, medium and large for your washes; you may choose synthetic or natural hair depending on your preferences. You may substitute much more affordable blush make-up brushes from the drugstore for these. They work just fine. Mop (blush) brushes also work well for dry pastel work.
Oil pastel will use the same brushes listed above if you’re going to use turps to paint with your oil pastels.
Brush List
Small round natural sable
Small filbert natural sable
Small flat natural sable
Medium round blended sable mix
Medium filbert blended sable mix
Medium flat blended sable mix
Medium fan blended sable mix
Large round synthetic nylon
Large filbert synthetic nylon
Large flat synthetic nylon
Large fan synthetic nylon
Extra-large round natural hog bristle
Extra-large filbert natural hog bristle
Extra-large flat natural hog bristle
Extra-large fan natural hog bristle
Palette knives (3 - 6 diamond and spade in various sizes)
Rounds
Filberts
Flats
Fans
Palette Knives
Extra Large
Woohoo! You made it to the end of “Plein Air Hawaii Gear Guide, Part 1: Paints, Mediums, and Brushes”! Feel free to share this #artsupplies #gear guide to your favorite social channels using the links below with the tags @andrewrosemfa and #andrewrose and also link back from your sites. For permission to publish in whole or part, please contact me in advance.
Next up: Supports, Canvases, and Papers.