Everything you need to paint outdoors, and nothing you don't, packed small enough to ride with.
The fastest way to stop painting outdoors is to make it a production.
The big easel. The full set of tubes. The folding chair, the parasol, the second board "just in case." Every item is reasonable on its own and the sum of them is a day you never quite get round to having. The kit becomes the obstacle.
The bike fixes this by force. You can only carry what fits, so you're made to answer the question every plein-air painter avoids: what do I actually need? The honest answer is: far, far less than you own.
Here's the kit I ride with. It fits in a small bag, it weighs almost nothing, and it has never once stopped me making a painting.
The mindset first: pack for the painting you'll actually make
Outdoors, you are not making your studio masterpiece. You're catching a moment of light before it moves. That means small, fast, and simple. A kit built for that is a kit you can carry.
Two rules I pack by:
1. If it gives me more choices, it probably stays home. Choice is the enemy of speed. Fewer colours, fewer brushes, fewer boards — fewer decisions to dither over.
2. If it only earns its place "just in case", it stays home. "Just in case" is how a bag gets heavy and a morning gets wasted.
The paint box
A small metal watercolour tin with pans. Mine lives permanently packed so there's no decision and no forgetting.
You do not need forty colours. A workable plein-air palette is a warm and a cool of each primary plus an earth — six or seven pans does almost everything Cornwall asks of me. Sky, sea, granite, gorse, sand. The limited palette isn't a compromise out here; it's the right way to work. It keeps the picture harmonious because every colour is mixed from the same small family.
Decanting your paint: if you work from tubes in the studio, you don't have to buy pans to go portable. Squeeze your tube colours into the empty pans of an old tin and let them dry out for a day or two. They reactivate the moment a wet brush touches them — exactly like shop-bought pans, but in your own chosen colours and a fraction of the cost. It's the single best small upgrade for going light.
Brushes
Two, maybe three. A round no. 10 or 12 for the body of everything, a no. 6 for medium marks, and maybe a fine one if I think I'll need a detail or two — but usually I don't, and the painting's better for it.
A water-brush (the kind with a hollow handle you fill with water) is worth a look for cycling. It cuts your water pot out of the equation entirely, which is one less thing to spill in a bag and one less thing to balance on a wall. Some painters love them, some find them limiting — try one and see.
Old brushes travel well, by the way. They've lost their precious points and developed character, and you won't cry if one gets squashed in the bag.
Something to paint on
A small, hardbacked watercolour pad or a few pre-cut blocks of 300gsm cold-pressed paper held to a piece of lightweight board with bulldog clips. Small is deliberate — a postcard or A5 painting is finished before the light changes, and you'll make six of them in the time a big sheet takes to bully you.
The hardback or the board matters more than the size. You need something firm to work against and something the wind can't fold.
Water, and the rest of the small stuff
- Water: a small collapsible pot, or a screw-top bottle you decant from. One pot is fine out here — be ruthless about rinsing.
- A rag or a roll of kitchen towel. Does more work than any brush. Lifts, blots, controls, cleans.
- A pencil and a small clip. For the lightest of guides if you want one.
- A bin bag or a fold of plastic. Sit on it, shelter under it, wrap the kit in it when the Cornish sky does what it always does.
What I deliberately leave at home
- The big easel. I paint on my knee, on a wall, on the bike's top tube, on the ground. No-easel painting keeps you low, mobile, and honest. If you must have support, a tiny pochade-style box or a lightweight folding stool earns its place — a full field easel does not fit the brief.
- The full palette. Covered above. Six colours, not forty.
- The chair, the parasol, the spare everything. Stand. Lean. Squint. Move on.
The packing test
Lay it all out, then put it in the smallest bag you own. If it doesn't fit, you're carrying too much — take something out. If it fits with room to spare, good, leave the room, don't fill it.
A bike kit isn't a stripped-down studio. It's a complete tool for a specific job: catching the light, fast, somewhere you rode to. Pack it once, leave it packed, and the only thing between you and a morning's painting is getting on the saddle.
Next in the Cornish Cycling Sketcher series: where I actually ride to — Cornwall's painting hotspots, and which ones are worth the climb.