I recently inherited a lovely little 6x8inch pochade box. It was hand built in 2014 by a dude named Douglas Smith.

The box is compact and has been used sparingly. The artist tended to work much larger than 5×8, but if you’ve been here a minute you know I LOVE working around that size.

The box arrived well built and in great barely used condition.

But if you’ve been here a minute you know I’m not going to use anything straight out of the box. I made a few changes.

First I attached a swiss arca tripod mount. (Similar to this one.) 

Then I used 2 friction hinges to update the hinge situation. It arrived with 2 cute brass hinges and an arm that holds the easel section upright. I wanted more versatility in angles. They were easy to install and look okay. They aren’t as pretty as the original brass hinges. I probably could have installed just one hinge in the middle and left the original brass hinges, but through that would look funny. The friction hinges have mixed reviews. They are perfect for this kind of install- they aren’t hidden so they don’t need to fold back flat on themselves and the friction is adjustable. Yes they are plastic and metal would be better, but these were cheap for a lot of them.

The box arrived with a simple and nice enough handle. It’s got brass attachment points and a plastic handle that moves. I will be replacing this with a small strip of nice heavy duty leather in a dark brown shade. 

I immediately cut down some chipboard to fit into the wet panel and painting area of the box. It will hold 6 pieces of chipboard with watercolor taped to the center area. In my case I’m attaching watercolor postcards. After all I still have 200+ cards. I suspect I could tape up to both sides of the panels and double the number of painting surfaces. In the end i went with one card per board since I will be working mixed media and don’t want to take a chance that I damage any of the images I’ll be making.

In packing the pochade box I’m figuring out what mixed media I want to include in the box itself and what i want in a separate pack that I can easily bundle with the pochade box. Currently I have 2 different watercolor palettes and a handful of colored pencils. I think I need to add in some oil and chalk pastels. I’m also bundling up a sketchbook pack that I’ll detail here soon.