Wahoo! We are just back from a trip where I painted in Tuscany for three weeks. I painted 9 pastel paintings (9″x12″ each) and filled a whole 9″x12″ sketchbook (both sides of the paper), plus read four books meanwhile..

This trip was a huge privilege! I’m so grateful to have been invited and for the kindness and generosity of our hosts.

The trip was cobbled together between two invitations. One of my painting friends in Maine knew a wonderful artist, in small town Chiusi, who offered us the use of his studio and was willing to show us around. Would I like to come? Four of us said yes (along with two husbands including mine).

Additionally, we had been offered an open invitation from some church friends (and fellow blog readers of yours) to visit them in their Tuscan villa.  When we considered coming, we were encouraged to stay for longer than we would have presumed, complete with the offer of a painting studio there as well.

So we were guests in these two locales for a total of 17 days, plus a day in Florence after flying in and another before flying out.  This made of a very affordable and low key trip, especially since we got our flights through credit card points as well.

I would have loved to have painted larger in these two gorgeous studios, but I was limited by bringing only portable materials, and few liquids, since we did not check any bags. Above you can see all I took– the bottom carry-on suitcase of clothes, and the top “personal item” chock full of carefully selected art materials. I have photographed these below and will itemize them here with links, for those that are curious.

For painting in the sketchbook, I brought gouache, clear envelopes filled with select collage materials, and watercolor pencils and sticks, as well as Posca pens, and wax crayons. I also brought my plein air pastel box, with some pastel premier sanded paper on pads that were assembled as rigid on blocks, so I did not need to bring a backing board.  I brought “clear bags” to put finished paintings in to bring them home.

I brought two good brushes for painting in watercolor and gouache, one “bad” brush for underpainting on the sanded paper (the roughness would ruin a good brush) and a silicone spreader for collaging and glue. I ordered acrylic medium from an European art store and had it mailed to our first location, to use for gluing down collage. You can bring scissors on the plane as long as the blade are under 4″.  I was quite content with what I brought to work with.

Here are links to these materials, which I’ve collected over many years:

Heilmann Pastel Box

Dakota Pastel Premiere Block

Clear Bags

Small tins of watercolors 

Winsor and Newton gouache

palette for gouache

Intense Watercolor pencils

Daniel Smith Watercolor Sticks

Caran D’Asche wax artist crayons

Stabilo Woody pencils

Posca pens

I loved the 300# thick paper in my Winsor and Newton watercolor sketchbook, but now see it is only available in Australia.

I’ll be blogging photos and artwork from this trip for the next couple weeks. I hope you enjoy this virtual tour of Tuscany!