New Studio Space

Our house has been in a near state of constant of renovation... well... maybe it's more of a state of complete chaos caused by stalled renovation. No active renovating is going on at the moment, nor has there been in over half a year. 

Until yesterday, however, our living room was FILLED with furniture and boxes full of STUFF that had been removed from the basement (almost two years ago) for the basement to be renovated... but then that stalled... and the living room has been unusable since... which didn't matter much as there's a pandemic going on and it's not like people were coming over to hang out or anything. 

Of course, the basement, devoid of furniture and STUFF, is also unusable, for the most part, including the room that is, in theory, supposed to be and "Art Space". So I have just been working wherever I can temporarily clear a space - at the kitchen table, by the computer, in my reading chair - none of which are ideal places.. AND, because there is no designated space for all art supplies, they tend to be scattered all over the place and have to be hunted for whenever I want to do something. 

This week I decided enough was enough. While Amanda was out at work, I just started moving stuff out of the living room. Some of it went to the garage, some went upstairs, So even went back into the basement - for now, as there is no active renovation happening and won't be in the foreseeable future!?

Then I rearranged what was left and moved all art supplies I could find, scattered about the house, INTO the living room. I still need to organize it a bit better... but it's a start... 

I should have taken some before pics of the living room.  

New Art Space tucked in behind couch in the living room. 

The space still needs some sorting and organizing... but it's a start. 

it's going to be hard to give up this space - if the basement ever DOES get renovated - such great natural light. 

Out basement isn't THAT bad - it's not like some with no natural light - the room designated as "Future Art Space" DOES have two big windows and a fair bit of natural light... but not like this... 

Time to go try it out... 

Easels

We’ve been doing quite a bit of painting around here lately. Unlike the tones of drawing we’d been doing previously, painting – especially BIGGER pieces – is pretty tricky to do on a flat surface… For the last couple paintings I did (Retired Rat Roams Rural Roads, Tentacle Creature loves Pretty Unicorn, and the Soldiers of Neukirch Uniform Plate) I dug out his old tabletop easel that my grandmother had used for I don’t know how long.

(Remember: click on the pictures below to see a slightly larger version)


Handy sturdy little thing, probably built for her by my grandfather or step grandfather. Somehow it had come into my possession and sat unused for years.

Of course with all this painting going on, the kids got rather excited about he idea of painting themselves… and I got excited about them painting – though had avoided it for some time being rather concerned about the potential for MESS!

As I said painting on a flat surface just wouldn’t do (sleeves in the wet paint and getting smeared all over EVERYTING!?) so I realized we’d need more easels.

After snooping around downstairs I found a bunch of tiny little ones:



The seems a little spindly and I had no idea where they came from., but we tried them out anyway. I thought maybe Amanda had used them for the summer camp she had run years ago. After using them we realized there were not really made for children to actually use as easels ( I later discovered they had come from my mom and were really for display purposes ONLY!).

Being a handy sort of guy, however, I decided to copy the simple sturdy little easel my grandmother had.


In a couple of hours I had manufactured two simple, solid, sturdy easels for the kids!


Then I made another, bigger version for myself (in anticipation of working on LARGER pieces in the not to distant future!).

I think I might make a couple more smaller ones – in case we have any smaller friends come over to paint with us!!