New Studio Tour with Jeff Watts - Watts Weekly

[Music] all right go for it hey guys it's time for another watts weekly i told you i was working on moving my studio from my old space which you guys have seen many uh watts weeklies done um we've kind of gone to the new format so we're kind of uploading different content uh older ones because we've done like 100 of them and so hopefully you're enjoying those some of the old ones some of you are new to the program uh you haven't seen those old ones and we're going to be uploading those to our youtube channel so you can also go over and check them out there uh but every week or every week we're going to be adding a new one so i thought every once in a while i'll throw in a new new one and so uh here's part of the the school's actually over there and then this building does kind of an l shape so when you come in this is what we the space we've been working on you'll just see like fetching prints and not originals of course i wish they were i'd be retired right now um some of my dad's old plein air paintings when we come in here um these are some uh dean cornwell originals uh little gouache paintings that i um picked up years ago uh for his murals that he did up in los angeles california so those are kind of cool just to see his little gouache comps um so there's a couple of them in here we've got a couple of guys sharing some space in here that are working for me for the atelier here's my studio that i'm working on so i just put these big doors in um and when you come in it's pretty crowded but most studios are so you'll kind of crew come on in and you'll see that i've got it set up kind of with a perimeter you can walk around ultimately i mean i've got a ladder over here and stuff but there's a little area where i shoot my critique videos for the online streaming so if some of you've been in the streaming and you kind of wonder what my setup looks like this is kind of what my setup looks like then i used to have a camera a tripod with a little um my ipad over over it that does the filming um behind it yeah you just see a little sketch that's on there but behind it you'll see a huge rack that i had built uh for storing my large frames paintings crates uh panels to paint on every different kind of panel you can imagine um some i've done myself leaded some are just you know so anyway this is where everything gets stored so i wanted a nice storage area i'll store up top as well over here i have a large paper storage which stores all my old sketches um conceptual sketches i'm working on for painting ideas um over here so that's where i store all all my you know preliminary drawings also nice papers i want to work on for long drawings um those get stored in various areas so i've got i label everything according to like you know western concepts conceptual uh concepts uh this is just handmade papers you know so i as i put things in here i label them so i can find them easily later there's gouache comps in here there's all kinds of cool stuff um when you come over here obviously you have the mega bookshelf and that's where all my inspirational reading is along the top that's more spiritual stuff you know things that are just really motivational um anything from tony robbins to all kinds of different things um very top you've got all kinds of obscure famous artist courses and things of that sort you've got all this is anatomy and through here um pretty much all different anatomy books composition color theory fantasy work inkers inking fine art painters illustrate contemporary illustrators animators i mean you name it so this is one of my things i'm most proud of and i talked to you guys about and you can pull back here too uh just get a little white wider look of it but this is one thing that's a rite of passage for most of you is going to be building a good library now a lot of you are going to be more modern and you're going to probably do it via the internet you're going to be downloading pdfs you're going to be doing books ebooks you may not need this but i love to just be able to go in here pull out this book i mean every one of these books i've i'd say a good three quarters of them i've gone through i've gutted them i've studied them so this is your rite of passage for learning your craft right now i don't want to scare you off i just want to inspire you and say not everybody's going to invest this much money time and energy tracking down obscure out-of-print books i'm kind of nerdy that way i love doing it it's a real um passion of mine i love the smell of the old books i love to hold them i love to sit down just leisurely read through them i like to actually put them on my drawing board copy from them so again the whole point of having a good library is that when you get in a conundrum on a painting you say like for example we have this painting over here this little demo i did at the oil painters america show this year um cool little head but say i i'm i'm having a hard time and i'm thinking i want to you know some kind of vignette idea i might go over and pull out of richard schmidt book um schmidt being one of the best video editors ever i'm trying to think of where i put it because i just got my books all organized um i think these those are that's in my hard to find books over there but i would pull that book out and that might inspire me to figure out how to do this background now if that was a painting that was going to sell for x amount that might pay for that book 10 times over just that one problem that i solved from looking at that book now i'm not looking to copy necessary from the book but to get inspiration and to get ideas so this is my little square working area here where i'll be working here got my cabaret over here this is where my paints will be set out got all my palette knives extra brushes more brushes all my paints get stored in this little tabaret here the tabari can flip up it's glass so i can put my paint out clean it very easily there's another tabari well these are just something i've got to mount on the wall but this one here is a travel tabare glass in it paints laid out so i can use that or i can use the one underneath it either one could work once for traveling doing demos like that other one is more for studio um the lighting system i use changes all the time this is kind of a cool one i forgot with this light maybe um this one i got i won an award in opa years ago or something and i got a coupon from half off this thing or something it's a pretty cool lighting system the only thing i don't like about it is when i'm using a big painting that sticks out because i like to paint in the frame at the end of a painting just to kind of see how it's going to look and that frame comes out too far and the light won't hit the painting very well so that's the only problem i have with i wish this would telescope out a little bit that'd be i should call them and tell them um but anyway we're gonna squeeze past here um this is cool got the old school ladder in order to you know if i need to get up to the top row here i can just kind of shimmy up here i've got again all the famous artist courses out of print very cool up here some obscure books that won't fit in these shelves because they're too large um all kinds of stuff around here so i'll probably let me get down here take this move it aside so we get past look i'm still you know once i get it all set up it'll be a lot more user-friendly to move around this is an old cool model stand that i'm going to get i gotta get out of here so open up some space here it's just got some accoutrements laid on it so don't worry about that but um over here is kind of the shrine area that's my you know lots of memories lots of things that are very very um personal to me kind of a meditation area for me so i like to have a nice little area that i can kind of so this ultimately a little bit a little meditation stretching area yoga area kind of just kind of stretch when you're doing long days at the easels because you can get really cramped up over here we have um a little work area that is primarily for sketchbooking inking um you can see some sketchy little sketchbooks stuff i was doing um a painting's just sitting there because it's uh i know where to put it i haven't been on the wall yet um nice to have a little natural light coming in that's the only thing with this this studio that i wish was more like my last one was more natural light coming in but you know you a little bit's all i need i just need to be able to see some natural sunlight and i feel like i'm in a prison or a cave or something um so as you look around here you've got everything stored really nicely there's everything from my inking brushes to you know like if i open up this it's got all my rare ink you know like my winsor newton series sevens my raphaels don't want them smashed very expensive brushes put those in nicely got uh quills down here and got some other accoutrements here so all this stuff is well organized got my rack of gouache got all kinds of storage everything is in its place it's it looks busy it looks convoluted but everything has its place everything has purpose down here all my sketchbooks i did you know we did a sketchbook um watts weekly a while back i also did one on proco if you want to go over and check that on youtube i go through and show all my sketchbooks what i use them for to me sketchbook is a fine art it's not a doodle on a sketchbook and throw it aside and whatever it's little fine art pieces little idea generations little things that are very personal to me some of my most personal work is done in my sketchbooks so anyway this is sketching i've got pencils i've got my pencil line up here that i travel with it's got all my um clip pencils and lead pencils and different hardnesses and that's a nice little case that kind of folds up and you can travel with it very easily without ruining your um your pencils so that's my little drawing area up here i have my world travels these are the places i've been to in the world different countries different places i'll continue to add to that that's a passion of mine as you all know i like to paint my experiences so one of the reasons i got into fine art in the first place versus illustration was that i wanted to paint what i want when i want live where i want and make use of money doing that who wouldn't want to do that right so you work very that's what you guys are in the middle of right now you're training in order to open up your dreams whether those dreams are to work at dreamworks or blizzard or rockstar or you want to go work in entertainment or you want to be a conceptor or you want to be a travel painter like me or you want to go out and be a plein air painter or a portraitus you want to do commission portrait work it's all available to you the linchpin awesome training gotta be phenomenal if you're not phenomenal none of those doors will be open to you if you're phenomenal all those doors could be opportunities right over here i've got my plein air painting rig one of them i've got many of them um some of my store i'll be storing up top there this one is a travel one got my um pack my hat my tripod behind that some satchels down here all the old school sweet old school palettes that i've used over the years i know you don't see many people use them like this anymore but that's the real deal that's the sergeant soroya zorn all those great painters i mean this is these are you know designed for outdoor painting but i used to use them primarily even for teaching and for indoor painting they're just really cool and they're very useful user friendly a lot of people think they're just for show but no they're extremely um efficient if you know how to use them properly we go over here we look at my flat file this is uh all the drawings that i've done in my life the good ones not all of them if you open up this man you'll see just truckloads us is actually one of gyms in there because this is the uh um wall hangers these are all drawings students have done at the atelier that are going to go on the wall or get rotated out of the wall and you've seen me do a watts weekly on that as well right where i talk about our wall of fame right it's where people come in they get good and they aspire to get a piece on the wall and that's to inspire other students but that's kind of a rite of passage as well so again you see uh there's drawings in here they're categorized according to figure drawings mail figure drawings female quick sketch male quick sketch female male head female head these are just thousands of life drawings um some of them three hours a piece so if you look at just every one of these is just full of drawings and so these are my racks down here i've even got more drawings that couldn't fit in here so you see just racks and racks and racks and pages you know just just and that was probably a quarter of the drawings i've done right these are all good ones these are the ones that are worth keeping i've thrown out three times it now this is not again to scare you to make you feel like it's hopeless if you like drawing it's just drawing right you're going to draw you're going to draw because you like to draw and the more you draw the better you get the better you get the more you want to draw so ultimately if you design your life around being a working artist or a teacher or any of that you're going to be producing a lot of work and the problem is where do you store all that work right you'd like to sell it all but unfortunately not all this sells like that you know you just don't have an avenue so a lot of it gets kept in these places because i really value them this is my life's work what part of it a good part of it that was done through teaching at the atelier 13 classes a week 20 years of doing that almost 30 years of doing that now and i don't teach 13 anymore obviously because i i'm just too old for that you know but um but i do uh love to still be right in the mix with everybody over here we've got my hard to find books these are um very expensive rare books uh this one's reppin from the reppin institute i picked it up when i was over there with stan pocapenko years ago with his family um behind this because i've got too many books um i mean these are all fetching sorov kromskoy these are all my russian masters all the top row here if you look behind that it's all russian drawing books russian painting books these are some of my favorite painters um i just love the way they paint we've got all sergeant in here mostly so that's like these are all sergeant books probably 30 of them right here's my little schmidt section down here i was talking about right that's all richard schmidt books over here we have alma tedema william chase down here we have all uh mucha sororia zorn those are primarily all the bottom is taking up with those three those two got three guys uh we got a little branguin over there um so a lot of cool stuff uh some clark healing slipped in there i don't know how but got in the bottom there but this is my my rare books right so i just like to keep them separate they're very valuable to me obviously some of them could be 200 300 bucks a piece um not all of them but there's some expensive books in there so um i also like to surround myself by pictures of my wife she's awesome she's the one that uh i do all this stuff for really i mean she's kind of my impetus um got my you know adopted grandma back there my dad pictures my dad my family my brothers my sisters so a lot of things that are meaningful to me because that brings energy into my work it keeps me grounded it makes me want to aspire to higher levels of accomplishment because i want to make them proud but i also want to make myself proud so there's a lot of reasons why i surround myself with such personal things i think a studio if you get a chance to see mo studios they really had the imprint of the artist now ideally my ideal studio would be like an old tuscan farmhouse right with freaking vaulted ceilings from 1540 you know with stucco peeling off the walls and just you know beautiful light coming in and and i mean of course who wouldn't want that right so but we work through different iterations my last studio was probably one of the best ones i would ever have but um unfortunately you know you don't want to get too attached to them either because life deals you a lot of weird things and sometimes you have to move out of them sometimes you have to go from a really great one to a really crappy one and still keep a good attitude still work through that still produce magnificent work no matter if you're working in a closet right and i've done things like that right so i've talked from experience a lot of times you see my studios and you think oh jeff's always got it good he's always got these amazing studios whatever i mean i've gone to some people's studios that would just you would die for scott christensen um david lafell i mean these different studios that are just these palatial beautiful studios and i think you know hey why not you know i'm always proud and happy of people if they can acquire that because good for them right they're out peddling their wares they're getting good they deserve it i am nothing but um inspired by people like that i never am envious i've never seen a studio you know i mean go into saroya studios sometime 30 foot ceilings palatial marble everywhere i mean it looks like you walked into an alma tedema painting you know and it's um but he deserved it right that's his life passion he was one of the greatest painters of all time i would expect nothing less right but if he was working in a an old shack somewhere it wouldn't surprise me either you know i mean i just think it comes in all flavors i love to make my workspace very personal to me because where i'm going to spend most of my life right so you you know just invest invest in your education invest in your books invest in your workspace try to do the best you can and everyone that you work up every notch is an accomplishment for you a a validation for the work done a validation for how good you've gotten how much work you've done and you should be paid off for that and you should be paid well for that but you gotta earn it first okay i've got a little storage stuff over here casts around tons of casts in the studio you guys have seen the studio before this is just a place to store solvents um you know what else this is gonna mount my tv that is going to be a it's a not a tv it's a computer touch screen computer that i can zoom in and out of when i'm working for my reference and so the tv will mount will be here i'll move it over there when i'm painting and then i can just reach over and pull my reference up and down just like a touch screen on your ipad and that's kind of a cool thing to have if you want to paint a little bit more like you're painting from a live model versus from a photograph so up here's metals that i've won gold medal silver medal and bronze medal for the master signature uh opa some honor awards from the portrait society of america um i have a lot of other stuff but this is just some of my key ones and then a bunch of the um california art club commemorative stuff and as well as preeta west i was in for 10 years so just lots of things that remind you of this good picture of my dad up there gotta love that i gotta have a picture of my uh one of my main heroes right above uh where i work over here um we have a dean cornwall original which i'm very proud of something i picked up years and years ago and it's a pretty notable opinion of his that you'll see in the dean cornwall book but it's fun to have that kind of work around you because it inspires you and again i've never been one of those artists that tries to get deals on other artists work i think it's incredibly valuable and it brings such inspiration and it opens up your workspace so all these walls will ultimately be covered with probably studies and paintings of mine i just haven't gotten all my paintings up here from my other studio um so as you come through here we have a little tab array here it's the back side of it but again i can store all my my pencils my extra pencils things like you know just different papers and stuff again everything being utilized here's my projector my opaque projector this is an old-school autograph they don't make them anymore very cool love this tool you can get autographs hard to find now um they're wonderful but you know basically what you do is you put your reference in here so this opens up reference goes in here it's got a mirror in there with a lens and then you close it and then you basically use these to expand and contract the image down here which you can then project onto a surface a lot of people think it's cheating oh that's tracing it's cheating if you don't know how to draw right if you know how to draw don't use one of these if you are spent you know like me 30 years drawing tens hundreds of thousands of hours drawing this is just a tool to expediate the process if you're in the middle of an illustration job in the middle of some piece where you need to scale things up multiple images this is a great tool to have so i'm a big fan of projectors but they need to be used properly and respectfully according to your development i used to be really kind of strict about not allowing the students to use these for the first two or three years they were with me and then once they proved their drawing skills then we would open that up so anyway that's kind of my studio in a nutshell and i hope you enjoyed it it is kind of a personal thing to open up a studio especially when it's in a kind of a schlocky state but i figured if i didn't do it now it could be months before i get around to doing it for you so i'll show it again maybe sometime when it's totally polished out but but then it'll get polished out and then i'll start using it and it'll get even messier right so it doesn't really matter but anyway have a great time i love you guys i hope you're doing well i hope you're healthy i hope we're getting over this thing it feels like we're on the tail end of it i feel like things are getting back to normal we'll be we will be starting back up the next term right so this is great we got one more five week term or we just started it then we have about a three or four week break and then we're back on to actually doing both streaming and brick and mortar and the online so you have three choices if you can come out and join us in person we'd love to have you i think it's nothing like it could be like a working vacation for you um but it is you know gonna cost some money and time so just if not continue on with your streaming continue on with your online and you're gonna you're gonna have plenty of the bases covered okay take care hope you guys are doing well see you soon cheers you

Channel: Watts Atelier of the Arts

Views: 52,808

Rating: 4.9663033 out of 5

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Id: AYCy6yd1gxo

Length: 21min 8sec (1268 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021