The Urban Goat Pochade is crafted by hand using the finest solid hardwoods to be both strong and beautiful. Its efficient design integrates the palette, panel holder, and brush trays into one sleek box, meaning less weight to carry without sacrificing functionality or durability. The Alpine goat has a 13” x 9.5” x 5/8” palette space and weighs just over 2 pounds including panel holder, brush trays, palette and mount.

This is lighter than most any other pochade of similar palette dimensions when one includes palette, panel holder and utility trays.

The innovative aluminum base plate supports any standard tripod, but works best with those equipped with Arca Swiss adapters (e.g., SmallRig, FotoPro, Manfrotto, etc…).

Our current highest recommendation is to use with the FotoPro 59” Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod. It weighs just 2 pounds, folds to just 13”, but extends up to 6 feet tall (7 feet with pochade attached). Its Arca Swiss ball head is the strongest in its class.

Fair question! If you like to sit while painting or are just trying to limit the amount of gear you carry, you don’t absolutely need a tripod. You can place your Urban Goat pochade on your lap or a table top and paint away. The fold out trays give you plenty of working space to cleanly paint.

The angle of the panel holder is fully adjustable to any angle using friction hinges.

Canvas panels are easily inserted and held in place using our unique three-prong Goat Grip canvas holder. The upper grip adjusts in height with a quick release button, while the lower two grips are spring loaded to apply flexible upward pressure. Canvases will hold in place in the windiest conditions, yet are easily inserted or removed.

The Alpine Goat supports canvas panels between 6” and 16” in height.

Some other vendor’s pochades include integrated panel holder, but have separate utility trays that must be carried outside the box (more bulky and heavy) and then inserted to use. Meanwhile, Urban goat pochades have two integrated fold out utility trays that open up instantly and securely at the start of your session, and then fold down easily and cleanly at the end of your painting session.

Similarly, other vendors’ gravity mount easels have integrated fold out utility trays, but have a separate panel holder that must be carried apart and attached to the tripod. Urban Goat have both integrated utility trays and panel holder, which gives it a smaller travel footprint.

Each of the fold out utility trays sport two elastic strings of beads. The elastic securely holds down your brushes, while the beads keep individual brushes separated to avoid paint contamination between the brushes and away from the handles. It is effortless to insert or retrieve individual brushes. You an alternate placing brushes under one or both of the strands to add an additional layer of separation.

Additionally, you can use portions of the utility tray to hold solvents, brush cleaners or a beverage (just be sure not to drink your solvents or clean your brushes in your coffee :-).

Our pochades have beautifully smooth wooden palettes finished with two coats of shellac sander sealer and three or more coats of high quality woodworking lacquer to create a mirror finish that is a joy to mix paint on and simple to clean up at end of painting session using paper towel and odorless mineral spirits. Some painters prefer a uniformly neutral gray palette; in this case, we recommend placing a thin acrylic sheet on top of the wood palette and coloring the underside as desired with acrylic paint or Gray Matters palette paper.

Glass palettes can be used in Urban Goat pochades, but please note that they are both fragile and heavy - both of which are not ideal for travel painting.

My favorite palette hack: Place a couple of strips of artist tape along the top inch or so of your pristine palette where you normally put your paint dabs. At end of painting session, wipe your center mixing area normally using palette knife, paper towel and OMS. Cover your unused paint dabs with a plastic doggy bag, wax paper, foil, or Saran Wrap to slow oxidation until next painting session. Each new paint session, replenish dried or used paint dabs as needed and repeat. Weeks or months down the line when your paint dabs are a mountainous mess, remove and discard by peeling up the artist tape. You can now do a good scrubbing of your palette with OMS and paper towels to get another pristine start.

On each box frame there is a univeral mount. These mounts take the same sized screw as a tripod, allowing you to fit any accessory you like. The ones we find most useful are lights and cell phone holders but any accessory that uses a ¼ inch standard screw is possible

We are very proud of our tripod mounts they are built ready to accept Arca Swiss tripods without needing any adapters.

We have found the first time you attach your box to your tripod it is useful to trun it upside down so you can see the attachment.

Taking your Arca Swiss tripod you will loosen the nob and place the side opposite the nob on the mounting plate first. You will then bring the nob side down so it is flat against the box, tightening the nob and confirming a strong hold.

You want the nob to be as close to centered on the box to ensure a sturdy mount.