(https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/unnamed.jpg)
This is the bike of Mark McLaughlin, who paints outside (plein air painting) even in winter. He carries a half-size French travelling easel in his pannier, which looks to me like the Brooks roll-up canvas pannier, though I didn't know they came in that pale a colour.. Erected, a French easel looks like a full-size easel with a case built in with a drawer inside. (It's not actually a pochade box, which doesn't have legs built in, but the purpose is the same.) Scroll down in the article linked for pictures, including another picture of his bike in summer at the bottom:
https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2020/12/24/plain-air-painting-winter/ (https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2020/12/24/plain-air-painting-winter/)
Interesting article. Of course, winters in the South of England are generally not as nasty as in Canada or Oregon or Wisconsin or even Scotland in a bad year.
And here are photos of a plain air expedition by bike of mine: I use a Basil pannier basket, which is open at the top, because I live in a mainly crime-free area.
http://coolmainpress.com/andrepaintings/cleanbicyclepaintingexpedition.html (http://coolmainpress.com/andrepaintings/cleanbicyclepaintingexpedition.html)
The Basil pannier basket, besides its convenience and carrying capacity, is highly recommend as a buffer between your bike and careless Range Rover drivers.
We've discussed other aspects of painting expeditions by bicycle before at http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=13745.0 (http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=13745.0)
There are reports of slightly colder days ahead, with sun and blue skies. Maybe a photo? Went for a walk along the river a coupla days ago: it's still almost entirely open, the entire land- and skyscape a discouraging gamut of grey.
One of the reasons i like Ireland a lot is that so often it is overcast, and the temperature picks up a couple degrees, maybe even Celsius, and the drizzle of "a soft day" is light enough to ignore -- it just rolls off wool clothes with the lanolin still in it, and even the cottons I prefer don't soak through all that fast if they're closely woven. (Trivia: Celsius is a boy's name here, though I've run only into one example in forty years, a charming fellow who worked for the Council.) I'm very fair skinned and burn easily, even in Ireland, and that added to the cold of a sunny day, makes the overcast day my favourite. Returning to the subject of painting expeditions by bicycle, decades ago I brought a client to play golf in Ireland and, because the client was a cultured man, brought along one of my art directors. The art director won a bet that he could name a thousand different greens we saw. He also said that while the sunlight colours were more saturated, the overcast colours were more subtly graded. I didn't paint at the time, and before that I'd painted portraits, not landscapes, but suddenly I saw that the overcast colours and gradations and perspectives in Ireland were far more rewarding than the bright sunshiny ones.This was a dozen or so years before I came to live here, but when we did, at a dull dawn at Rosslare, as we came off the ferry from France, I saw the sun rise behind the clouds, and remembered, and turned the car south towards the sun, deciding in that moment to settle near the southernmost decent university which turned out an inspired decision. Later I painted a symbology of that moment:
(http://www.coolmainpress.com/andrepaintings/andre_jute_offertory_and_sundial__rosscarbery_2017_watercolor_on_octavo_ingres_800pxw.jpg)
andre_jute_offertory_and_sundial__rosscarbery_2017_watercolor_on_octavo_ingres_800pxw.jpg