New Art Studio Space- Lighting

A very important consideration is studio lighting. There needs to be enough of it to see your subject, painting and palette without eye strain.

Light temperature is something to think about. The coolness or warmth can be plotted on a Kelvin scale:

An incandescent bulb is 2600K on the scale, with almost an amber tone, while a daylight bulb is 5250K, much cooler. I like to keep my lighting at the daylight level, with a little bit of warmth mixed in. A good way to do this is with LED bulbs.

They come in a wide range of temperatures, they don’t get hot like incandescent and they last a lot longer. Some light fixtures like the four flush mounted ceiling lights in the illustration below come with a built in LED unit. They give off a nice full light but when the LED unit burns out they can’t be replaced, the whole fixture will need replacing. On the other hand the larger 180 watt equivalent light fixtures in the center of the ceiling hangs down from the ceiling on a rod about one foot and take LED light bulbs that can be replaced.

Here is what the lighting in my studio looks like

Other factors that come into play are the amount of natural light coming in windows. I like to keep some LED lights mounted on floor stands, to move around the room as needed.

LED lights on stands can come in handy to fill in areas while working on special projects. These have covers on to provide a diffused light.

New Art Studio Space, Need #1

Studio Space, a place to work. What do you really need? My perception of “the dream studio” has changed over the years. The European villa glowing with north light, with enough space for three easels, a stage, walls tall enough to hang paintings three high, an area just to contemplate including overstuffed chairs and a couch. This setup is not only unobtainable by most but not practical.

Many years ago my “studio” was a spot on the kitchen counter, which needed to be transferred to a closet when it was time to make dinner.

Later in another house I took over a bedroom. This worked out most of the time except when large painting projects or shipping required branching out into the garage or backyard. Eventually I took over another room to store paintings and frames.

We’ve recently moved into a house that has just what I need, two rooms with a common wall we removed for a larger space.

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what an efficient work space looks like. We, as artists are visual people, so it’s also important to like the way our space looks.

Number one on my list is storage;

Storage for frames. Good frames are expensive, corners can be easily damaged if left leaning against each other.

Storage for stretched canvases. Stacked up with smaller sizes leaning against larger ones can leave permanent dents in the surface.

Storage for large pads of paper. Drawings can get damaged, good paper gets creased.

While searching around on-line I found this solution that checks all the boxes for me. The Art Storage System

It’s on wheels, so you can wheel it to different locations in your studio, or park it away from the wall to hold larger items. It’s modular, so I can add to it at a later date. It knocks down. As someone who just survived a move, it’s very fresh in my memory how difficult it is to move large and heavy items, like this would be if it did not break down. The only downside is it takes several weeks to get once ordered.

Now onto the next thing on my list….

A Painting Detour

Sometimes life gets in the way of painting, and that’s exactly what happened to me. John and I have been thinking of moving for sometime. The raging real estate market said “now is the time”. In late August we began the whole process.

Putting our home in Phoenix for sale brought an abrupt halt to painting as our real estate agent advised us to stage my studio space as a bedroom to attract a larger audience. She was right, we sold it the second day!

Our house in Phoenix, with shipping containers, that’s Brandy looking pensive in the driveway

We found a new home in Las Vegas, which was closer to family where I could more than double my studio square footage. It’s going to take a little remodeling ; taking out a wall, redoing the floor, (carpet is not the best surface to paint on), and closing in the entrance with glass paneled double doors, it should all work out. We were ready to move several times but shortages of air conditioners, and garage doors held us back from closing for awhile.

Our new home in Las Vegas

Anyway, we are finally in the new house and work on the studio has begun.

The drywall being taken off, next the electrician, than the framers-

We found out that the wall between rooms is a bearing wall which means a large header beam will need to be placed at the top to hold the weight of the ceiling, but so far so good.