hard floor

Sunflower Study in Progress; casein tempera on board; 6" x 7.5"

My studio is my house is my outdoor surroundings - there are no boundaries.  To facilitate this, there are several set-ups that come into play.  What you see above is my table-top-easel which consists of a thin piece of birch-plywood weighted down with an old brick that I dug up when putting in the vegetable garden.  You can't see the brick (it's in back of the painting board) but you can see the little strip of wood that I glued on the plywood.  That came from an old cedar garden stake.  Other set-ups are my heavy field easel (what I tend to use most) and my pochade box (good for bicycling in to a site.)

When you paint whenever and wherever, it helps to know what you need and to keep your supplies to the bare minimum.  It also helps to take up all of your carpet and paint the subfloor.  (Scraps of carpet are great for suppressing weeds in the garden - they make great paths too.)  And to protect your bare subfloor, go ahead and paint it with left-over wall paint.  You can even paint a map of your neighborhood on it for fun - and for little matchbox cars to traverse should the occasion arise.