Saturday, August 22, 2009

Studio setup for pastel

I'm always interested to see how other artists are organized in their studio, so I thought this may interest someone too.

I'm always looking for better ways to organize my studio. It often distracts me from painting, but I have fun working on it and I gain so much by being well organized that it's worth it for me. Whenever I get an idea of what would work better and I know I can make it myself, then I need to work on it (design, material and execution, even in the 100F Texas heat). That's what happened last week.

I needed a better setup for my pastels and I needed a setup that would allow me to easily switch from pastel to oil painting with a minimum of things to move around.

So for pastels, I did two trays with lids. One pastel tray is for the semi-soft pastels and the other one for the soft ones (may change soon). The lid protects the pastels (or the cats) without having to put them (pastels or cats) away :). For easy access and to have a better view at the pastels, I put each tray on an angled shelf.



Pastel trays on angled shelves. The lid is on the left tray and the right tray is partially filled with semi-soft pastels.



Taking into account my studio space limitation, I also made the trays stackable and the shelves foldable for easy storage. You can see them all on the first two shelves.

For oil painting, I made another tray (smaller than the pastel ones). I can put it on the angled shelf when needed (no picture of that yet) or under the table (to the right on the first shelf in the picture above).

For the organization of the trays themselves, I need to work with this new setup for a while and find out what works best for me. Stay tuned :)

3 comments:

BJ said...

Staying tuned! Everything looks so well organized and neat, it's hard to imagine it getting better. I'll keep watching to see how it all progresses.

Rae Andrews, Contemporary Texas Artist in all media said...

I agree with BJ ..that studio is the neatest one I've seen in a long time Johanne. you put mine to shame.!
Rae

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