I’ve been ill and don’t have much in the way of art to show, but I did acquire a new work table and tidy the studio up a bit, so it’s a good time for a studio tour.
My studio is 180 square feet of what used to be a 230 square foot attached garage (the rest of the space was saved for expanding the kitchen), which I remodeled with help from my dad. It has painting, drawing, and office space, so it’s a pretty full 180 feet.
Just inside the door is my office area. I’ll build a desk to fit the space eventually, but I wanted to live in it with what I had for awhile first to see what my needs were. A decent office chair is a must for long work days. The gray mass behind the desk is the chimney for the living room fireplace. I still need to trim it out, install wooden shelves on the chimney shoulders, and hang up the big mirror.
To the other side of the door is the (new today) work table and a catch-all bookcase holding supplies, reference books, and old sketches. the table provides a general use flat surface and a spot for friends to hang out and work on occasion.
The drafting table was made for my father when I was tiny, and is the same table I learned to draft on when I was thirteen. I spent a lot of time playing underneath it while he was working, and I still fit underneath it easily. It’s a monster. I don’t do any hand drafting now, but the parallel rule is fantastic for comic panels, and it makes an excellent drawing table. The roll-y IKEA thing holds paper, old drawings, and past work I want to keep flat. Storage of finished and in-process pieces is an ongoing challenge; I’ve been hanging unfinished paintings on the walls between the two tables, because if they’re near my easel they might get spattered with paint. Speaking of which…
On the other side of the large window is the painting area with my big easel (there are a few smaller easels tucked out of sight in the corner, in case I have company or more than one thing going at a time). Work on the easel gets light from the two LED tube fixtures above and the high row of north windows above the work table, and I can glance out the big window to see the neighbors walking their dogs. The giant awesome tool chest holds oil and acrylic paints and brushes, gloves, rags, mediums, and other messy painting things.
Bringing it full circle, the giant mirror is a drawing aid, which is especially useful for figuring out silly comic poses. The chimney is painted a perfectly neutral gray, so I can use it to color-correct photos of my art. I had the paint store color match a photo gray card, then added pure white until it wasn’t oppressive. And of course there are more unfinished and unstarted paintings. Storage space for those is something I still haven’t figured out. The hook on the wall behind the desk is a fiddle hanger, since I occasionally practice in here.
Turning a small, ratty garage into a comfy studio (did I mention those tile floors are heated?) is worth a whole other post.