Setting Up Your Art Studio - Book Sample
Evaluating Your Needs
A well-planned art studio is more than a place to paint. It should be an organized space that invites creativity, aids productivity, and helps you get the most from your painting time. It should be a place calls that to your spirit and tempts you in to create.
A preliminary step to planning your art studio is conducting what I like to call an “Activity & Tools Assessment.” This assessment will aid your efforts to work more efficiently by ensuring essential supplies and tools are nearby when you need them.
First, make a list of all the activities you typically perform throughout the creative process. These might include brainstorming, research, prepping, painting, clean up, framing and general business activities. Next consider organizing your space into similar “activity” centers. Separating your space this way will help minimize the times you have to leave your painting to hunt for various supplies.
On the next page is a table listing activities (left column) and tools & materials (right column). These lists are not exhaustive by any means. They should, however, get you thinking about which supplies you’ll need for each activity and generate some ideas for dividing your studio into several efficient work centers.
When oil painter and pastelist, JoAnn Lussier took over the space over their garage she said, “All I knew was that I wanted a separate area for pastel and one for oils so I could bounce back and forth, the rest of my studio just grew from there.”
Smaller studios will need to make use of overlapping or multifunction work centers. For example, if you have a tiny room, all of the typical studio functions - brainstorming, sketching, prep work, and painting, and business activities will happen at the one desk or easel you can fit in your studio. Larger spaces will have the luxury of distributing studio activities among separate work centers.
Forward | Introduction | The Value of a Studio | Ditching Your Inner Critic | Evaluating Your Needs