Today, I thought I'd share my little garage studio with you. It's about 340 sq. ft, ( a regular two -car garage minus space taken up by household junk) which is a far cry from what I used to have, but hey, at least I have some dedicated space. I've lived in tiny apartments where we had trouble doing anything without getting paint all over ourselves. This works pretty well for now.
My lighting over my main easel is a combination of 6500K flourescent tubes (eight of them) and several halogens on a track. It's a little too warm and in need of adjusting.
I have a door table in the middle of the studio on which I do flat work, making panels, framing, etc. When I have to use my power tools, I just drag them out to the driveway. Beats picking out sawdust from wet paintings!
Requisite coffee. Against the wall is another door table, on which I have a small joiner and various framing paraphernalia.
My palette. 16 x 20 inch glass surface.
The tableau that I built. It's a prototype. I'm building a slightly bigger one, with 16 x 26 inch palette, and side trays customized to how I use my tools.
The wall. In front are some kitchen cabinets that I took out of my kitchen. I didn't like the looks of 'em in my kitchen.
In the corner is my vertical rack, already full and overflowing. I really need to go through 'em and get rid of half the stuff in there...
More storage. Most of these are small floaters.
My new portable AC! Thanks to Janette's suggestion, I can now work without feeling like a rotisserie chicken.
Another view of the framing table stuff. See the beautiful seascape hanging on the wall? That's a painting by my friend Erik Tiemmens, who's got more talent in his pinky than most of us in our whole bodies. This painting usually occupies a much nicer wall inside the house, but I was studying it recently so it's currently among my junk. Sorry Erik!
As you can see, I live in Anysuburb USA.
My flat work table is made with two doors separated by a few 1 x 2's. Makes for a quick flat file.
Underneath it are my two Pelican boxes, which I use to pack all my plein air gear when flying to a location. Keep my equipment safe when they're throwing my luggage around at the airports. The plastic tub contains old clothes which I cut up to use as painting rags. Ain't nothin like worn cotton!
Brushes, etc.
Skye's push cart. She likes to push it around in the studio, bumping into paintings and easels.
One last look. The laptop is my stereo, plus sometimes I use it to display reference photos. I prefer my reference pics on paper usually.
Thanks for visiting my studio~ I'd love to see your workspace too. If you have a blog, how about uploading some studio images and letting me know?? David? I know you've got a killer space! Share!
17 comments:
That was fun. Thanks for sharing.
Wheres the weed-whacker?
...And you call this a garage!?
Thanks Mike~ and yer welcome!
Great fun! And I got some great ideas for my lilliputian studio. Thanks for the tour.
Thomas, if you stand at where the camera is on the first pic, and if you were to look to the right hand wall, (which is NOT in any of the pics) you would see a floor-to-ceiling "wall" of canvas dropcloth. If you were to peek behind this "wall", you would see a floor-to-ceiling shelving with all kinds of crap. Including my weedwacker, camping equipment, and boxes and boxes of unknown stuff.
Thanks so much for sharing your garage studio space and I am glad you had shown the outside looking out from your studio; it gives a real sense that your studio is in a garage. Right now I am waiting for my son to go off to college. He had beaten me to the garage space and he is using it as his bedroom. So I am looking forward to converted that garage bedroom into a garage studio.
I'm going to display my studio on my blog maybe next wk. Hey, is that a Toyota SUV with the mean air scoop? Looks just like mine. Boy, are we saving on gas! Thanks for letting me talk sales tax with you! I always get giddy on that subject. I know how you might get rid of a painting in your over crowded garage. Remember the one you did at the old Sac. city cemetery? Howbout we trade that for a Lobenberg watercolor of you or your wife? Just a thought.
Thanx for the peak into your space...I chose this weekend to carve out some space in our garage for my studio.....dang it is hot!!!
You gave me some good ideas!!!
Love the push cart!!!Before you know it she will be asking for a car!!!
Thanks Connie~
Calliartist, yep. it is what it is. a garage. I can't remember the last time I had a car in there. at some point I plan on replacing the garage door with some french doors. I'll need to sell more paintings to do that though...
David, indeed, it's a 4Runner. A great plein air vehicle but yeah. with the gas prices these days, I can't afford to paint en plein air.
A Lobenberg portrait would be awesome! But I have no idea where that cemetery painting is. I know I didn't throw it away because it was a good one. And nobody can sell a cemetery painting so I must have it in my studio somewhere. I'll look for it and get back to ya.
Barbara, a teenage Skye with her own car is a frightening thought! Fortunately, we have a few years yet to figure out how to deal with it.
Garage studio? I seem to remember you mentioning a yurt... or was that the llama barn?
Very cool to see your space and equipment! It is also great to be able to see and judge the sizes of your paintings this way.
You asked for our studios, so here we go:
http://krabbenvangen.blogspot.com
I spent a great deal of last year, building this with my father.
The Dutch text says: 'Usually this is a mess, but I cleaned it up last week to take some nice pictures'.
You can enlarge the pictures, and If you scroll down, there an outside view.
sure wish you'd come back and teach at S12
I use some of those same frames...
In that picture with your AC, the Omega frame in the front-- Is that a narrower version of the wider one in the back? I wasn't aware that came in different widths.
You have done such a great job with your space... and thanks for the lighting info...I'm still tweaking around with my lighting, it's always just "one more thing, THEN it will be perfect" Ha!
Your work looks fantastic in any setting...
Thanks for sharing rutger~ awesome space! can't believe you built it yourself!!
hey patti, yeah, I hope to get back to teaching regularly when my daily life is more predictable. Still pretty hectic right now, so it'll be a while.
Thomas, the thin one in the picture is F80 I believe. (off the top of my head - I'll have to check to be sure)
thanks janette~ I think 4 more flourescent tubes ought to do the trick for me. halogens are nice and bright but they're so warm that I end up seeing everything with a yellow tint. The paintings look great in that light (after all, it's the gallery lighting) but when I look at them under different light, they look way too cool.
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