Ultimate guide to optimizing your art studio for acrylic painting

[Music] hello everybody if you paint on a regular basis you need a permanent place to work you need a studio and in this video I'll show you what I have done when I organized my studio let's get started today I am the lucky owner of a very nice large studio inside my home this allows me to work on and off on a painting whenever I feel for it in my studio I have split up the space in several work zones all of them are related to the process of being a painter things not related to that process are not allowed in the studio one of the benefits of a large studio is that you don't have to tidy up all the time regardless of the size of the studio there will always be compromising and this process actually will go on forever in every painting I make I try to get better it can be new materials I try to refine my technique when I do this I need some kind of stability around me you could say I need a safe haven to be able to explore new territory here you see a photo of a studio I had many years ago and this is my present Studio that is before all the walls came up and it even became my studio and this is how it looks right now it was a very privileged situation to be able to decide so much from the start obviously you don't always have this kind of control of your environment some of my friends organize their Studios so that they can move everything around all the time of course flexibility is a good thing however wheels and modular Furniture does not come for free so consider how much flexibility will cost you in effort money and time flexibility is nice but go for the needs and in my experience you actually don't move around a lot after a while things remain standing at the exact same spots more or less all the time even though I love to experiment I also love kind of stability and to be honest I even dislike a little bit to move things around all the time so when I started to organize my studio years ago the task was indeed very exciting I had a lot of plans and I ended up probably like many others with far far too much going on I wanted it all and stuff my studio with a lot of things that could be very nice to have lying around very close for instant use however it quickly got messy and in my opinion mess is a powerful enemy of creativity in Italy I spent a lot of time to figure out what I needed all the time and I mean literally all the time it can be a few brushes certain colors balls for mixing bucket of water something to dry the wet brushes in ETC to clean out the rest and store them in boxes drawers closets or other place is harder try however to make your things as accessible as possible for instance try to store them in only one layer if you put things on top of each other it can be very time consuming to find the things you need how accessible you can make your things in the end depends on how much space you have in your studio in the beginning I had a small cozy exhibition of finished paintings in the corner of my studio but I really didn't need this I needed the space for a lot of other stuff and this is how it looks today the following is in my opinion the things you need to consider when you set up and organize your studio first of all keep it simple it's easy to say it's a little bit difficult actually to do it I use a special row on my own I call it the dust rule this rule is that if stuff gets dusty stuff must go because dust only rests on things that you don't use all the time and things you don't use all the time must leave the studio ample space on the floor when you paint you need all the time to step away from the painting to see what you're doing how fine the painting is looking now and this means you must be able to take a few steps back without annoyingly bumping into something then as rule number three you need amble place on a table preferably a large stationary table for all kind of paper burp small paintings Framing and more and at least one table on wheels number four you need daylight in your studio preferably from large Windows facing north since I dislike blinds I must be able to move around to avoid sunlight to fall directly on the canvas while I'm painting with a table on Wheels I can easily move it around and this is enough flexibility for me I must admit I enjoy to having the sun shining into my studio from time to time as long as it stay away from my canvas five electric light indoor light is a bit complicated and quite a big subject I'll try to make it short if you're only working during the daytime daylight is all you need forget about electroglide however in Denmark where I live we have these long dark windows and I need some kind of electric light to be able to paint when it's dark outside the light must essentially make it possible for you to assess the colors correctly many of the lights on the market are calling themselves for instance daylight lamps or natural lights or in my opinion not very suitable for painting so be careful what you invest in at least three things are important when you buy light first of all the lamps are a value it is also called color rendering index CRI it indicates the bulb's ability to uniformly illuminate surface using the entire color spectrum it is Paramount for how well you can distinguish the colors as the green a little blue or is it a little yellow you must be able to see the difference the ra value is given as a numerical number on the box you buy the ball thing 100 is the best and that is the number to go for however in practic it's not possible you will need a value of above 90. that would be fine you also need to decide whether you want to work in a light similar to the bluish and Cold Light outdoor or you like a warmer like like the traditional warmer indoor light the difference is measured in degrees of Kelvin you'll have to look for the capital letter k on the outside of the box of your lamps values of four to five thousand degrees of Kelvin relates to the outdoor lights temperature and values of three thousand three thousand five hundred will be more an indoor light so what light is the best I started years ago using small hello gain spots on a rail heligan was an excellent light to paint in it had an RA value of close to 100. it was nice but by far the most inconvenient feature of this light was that it radiated a lot of heat so when I was painting in the summertime in the evenings I was sweating like a pig and for that reason alone it didn't work for me ten years ago I invested in another ceiling rail system it was quite an expensive one and I bought spots and the so-called wall washers these lights use hid technology and they have an excellent r a value these lamps generates a lot of light and provides an almost uniform color spectrum representing all colors equally so that you can assess the colors in relation to each other most energy is used to provide light not heat that's what we like I tested lights with different color temperature even though the eye more or less understands and to some degree compensate for the slightly reddish light it has given my paintings a slightly blue tint today the quality of the LED light is actually very good and if I should go for a solution for my paintings today I probably would go for the LED lights they are small cheap and they have a very long life however some LEDs are only 80. stay away from them to conclude go for the four thousand or five thousand Kelvin degrees have an RA value of better than 90 and one more thing you can in fact be using too much light if you use a lot of light your paintings can appear a little brighter than they really are and when you take them away from the studio and hang them up on the wall they can look darker than you really intended them to be the amount of light is measured in lumens wise people say that 8 000 lumens will be sufficient for painting you will have to experiment a bit here then very important you will have to be able to close the door when I paint I hear a lot of music sometimes I use it very loud you know I like my own noise but I dislike other people's noise so a door to close is a good thing you also need a good sound system it's very important and it's only your wallet that sets the limit here and then again a little music is better than no music then your studio must be easy to clean I believe it's difficult to find something more boring than cleaning and the studio must be relatively clean you don't want dust particles to fly around in the air when you're for instance varnish a painting therefore cleaning must be easy so you spend as little time as possible doing that ventilation I'm using acrylic paint it doesn't smell if you use oil it smells all over the place so if you're painting with oil you need ventilation I know you can get oil that does not smell you can get turpentine with no order you need ventilation when I started I was using oil paint it was nice but I had a lot of headaches all these went away when I shifted to use acrylic colors that's the right for me maybe not for you acrylic paint is thinned with water when it dries it will evaporate the water I don't really know if it emits some not healthy things I don't know but to be on the safe side actually I ventilate my studio a lot therefore regardless of what paint you're using get fresh air all the time last but not least at least for me I need a piano in my studio when I take a break I play for a quarter of an hour or so and then I feel my brain is completely washed through brakes are important find something nice to do okay that's it for my studio I wish you all the best in organizing your studio please let me know in the comments below if you have things that I haven't covered in this video I hope you like this video and if you did please hit the like button or subscribe to my channel thank you for watching I'll see you in the next video bye [Music]

Channel: Painting with the old guy

Views: 54,906

Keywords: Organizing an art studio, organizing a studio, a place to paint, set up a studio, Acrylic painting, painting process, acrylic colours, Painting with acrylics, Using acrylic paint, acrylics, acrylics tutorial, Acrylic painting techniques, Workspace for acrylic painting, Organizing an art studio for acrylics, Tips and ideas for the acrylic studio, indoor lighting for painting, Electric lighting for painting, light for art studio, art studio tour, art studio, studio tour

Id: N_6wTLOSqMw

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2023