While a view is not necessary to creativity, facing a blank wall or looking into a carport are not ideal either. I always prefer to have some plants around. In fact one place I worked at I acquired a pot plant jungle around me. This studio outlook is the most idyllic I've ever had.

Photo thanks to Seattle Municipal Archives

This page is the place where all my technically inclined articles on art and painting are archived. The topics range from details on painting materials, to the business of art, to specific art techniques.

As this blog has grown it has become more and more difficult to easily find these, which are published about once a month. This is a shame as these are often the most useful and popular posts. There is now a direct link to this page from all areas of my site, on the sidebar.

 As part of my continuous learning I go in-depth on a topic that interests me at the time and write up what I have learned. For me this is a way of consolidating the knowledge for myself, putting it in one place that I can refer to again in the future, and sharing my findings. I am quite particular and go to some lengths to get the information right, so I trust it will be of good use to more people than just myself. Each article also contains links to the most useful resources I have found during my investigations.

This post is part of an annual blog feature over at The Altered Page called 'Buried Treasure'. There you will find links to unearth the top posts on many art blogs.

Learn & enjoy and remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at my life as an artist on Facebook.

To use this page - First give the script that collects all the relevant posts a moment or two to load. It should be done by the time you get down to reading this sentence. If not, close your eyes, tap your heels together three times, and that should do the trick.

If you want to do a plain search of this blog, use the Blogger search box which is at the very, very top of this page on the LHS, next to the B outlined in orange.

Hide TOC

************

The alarm on my phone goes off to tell me it's time to quit with the administrivia and get onto painting. I move over to the drying rack and cautiously test each painting in turn. Wet. Wet. Wet. Wet. Wet. Wet.

 

It's been at least two weeks since I began painting the summer installment of the art filled cookbook. There are six paintings still wet and on the drying rack. I am waiting. Eventually one of them will dry and I may proceed with it's next layer. 

In summer (it is midwinter where I am in country Victoria) the paintings go outside for a few hours on sunny days. This speeds up their drying time. Not due to the heat of the sun, but due to the UV. The 'drying' of oil paints is actually an oxidation and chemical cross linking process. Like many chemical processes it is helped by a small amount of heat, but the key ingredients are airflow and UV light. The air provides the oxygen the oil needs to combine with to oxidise and the UV acts as a catalyst.

The frustration of being stalled got me to thinking about recreating the summer conditions that enable the paintings to dry at a much faster pace. Ebay to the rescue, I am now the owner of a UV light designed to simulate rainforest sunlight for frogs in captivity. It's not the desert conditions I originally aimed for, but an experimental start that will be gentle on the paint pigments and, in theory, do away with the torture of paint never dries.

After a day wrangling with code - whoever thinks a modern artist can be a luddite has not seen my average day - that included various webby upgrades, module installs, sql patches, cron jobs and other geekery, some of which went smoothly and some that, ah, didn't, I am back in the studio and thought perhaps you'd like a wee tour?

To begin the tour, I work in a spare bedroom that was agreed would be my art studio I commandeered. My works are currently quite a managable size, so there is no need for a big space. I've learned how to paint without toxic fumes so there is also no need for a super extraction exhaust setup. This means I am able to work at home with my dog and destructopuppy and can take regular breaks out in the vege garden or whip up food when I feel hungry. I really enjoy the flexibility.

First off, it's a wonderful freedom to have all the books that inspire me to hand. And the filing too. 

This here is the office section of my studio, but you figured that out. Yes, this is a bit unusual. I find chairs really uncomfortable. You should see the wriggling and perching and contortions I get into in an effort to get comfy on a chair. But sitting on the floor on a cushion, Japanese style? I can focus without moving for hours at a time. 

I pride myself on figuring out lateral thinking solutions that are dead easy to implement. These are my drying racks. They are wire clothes airers turned into shelves. The blue box is a metal fire proof box for storing the oil paints and mediums. You know, just in case destructopuppy figures out matches.

And finally we have where the magic painting happens.  If it looks pretty basic, let me walk you through the whys and maybe you'll see how it fits me so well.

You might be able to see a few more sideways solutions if you look carefully. Forget fancy brush holders - huge instant coffee jars are perfect! And did you spot the giant plastic serving tray used as a palette for acrylics and the fridge egg holder used as a palette for inks and watercolour (icecube trays also work well)?

There you have it. An artist's studio revealed!

So artists, what's your studio look like? Pop a link to pix in the comments. I'm sure every creativity studio is unique.