How cave painting rescued a Portable Painter disaster

I’ve been playing around with ways to use the Portable Painter palette so that I can use it for gouache outdoors. The problem has always been that gouache paints dry out fast on a palette, so you often need to dig out the dried crumbly bits and then refill from the tubes. This obviously wastes paint, so I wanted to find a way of keeping the paint blobs moist on the palette and thus useable for a number of days.

My solution

The solution that I thought would work was to glue some patches of thin sponge (the kind you can buy to use in the kitchen) to the three large palette areas that fold directly down onto the paint wells. These could be dampened and would keep everything moist. The Portable Painter palette has two containers that slide over the closed palette and act to seal it from the air, so also helping to keep the paint from drying out. A perfect solution, I thought.

The problem

The problem was that I added too much water to the sponges, and when I ventured out to paint I popped the closed palette in a trouser pocket. I took Eli the dog with me and we went on her “long” walk which is about 40 minutes around the olive trees. Stopping at one spot where I saw something to paint, I pulled the palette from my pocket, opened it up and… out poured a bright green liquid, followed by red, blue and yellow slop. Yep, the paints had liquified. I was covered in paint, the palette was covered in paint, the tissue I used to mop up was covered in paint, and I used up all my water supply trying to clean everything.

Next time I need less water on the sponges!

So, there I was, determined to paint something, but without any supplies to do it. And this is where the caveman came in.

From the dawn of (painting) time

I thought, “Why do I need all this painting stuff anyway? Surely there is a way of painting that doesn’t need paints, palettes, brushes or pots of water, and tissues! What did cavemen do? They didn’t have all this equipment!”

They had mud and sticks, and sometimes their fingers or their hands.

On the way home I had to cross a tiny stream, and there was water and there was mud. And a twig. So in true caveman style I squatted down on my haunches and began to play.

It wasn’t that easy to pick up the sandy mud that was at the edge of the stream, but with a bit of practice I found what was just the right consistency of gloop that would stick to the stick and make marks on the paper. I needed to scrub and scratch it onto the paper in my sketchbook and build up layers to get the darker passages, but I found that the marks the twig made were great for depicting the upward growth of the olive branches and leaves. It was also good for making the striated bark of the trunk. I rubbed with my finger to soften the shadow area under the tree a little.

So, there we are, back at the roots of painting, using basic earth colours (literally earth colours!) and basic mark making tools. And so much can be created from so little. I feel as though I am on the edge of a new creative thing – using nature and natural colours to enhance my sketching and connect it directly to the landscape I am trying to paint. Who knows where this will lead… Thanks Mr Caveman!

I hope you enjoyed this post. Please give a thumbs up if you did, and I’d love to read your comments as well. Happy painting!

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