Freezer, Pallets And Other Odd Things Around The Studio

 

We got a new small freezer for the basement. I love it! Compact and just enough room for two older people. Our large upright gave up the ghost years ago, and being empty nesters, we really no longer needed the big freezer anyway. Funny how not having a teenage boy in the house reduces the grocery bills!

 

Now you are wondering what is all this talk about a freezer doing in an art blog? Yes, its nice she has one, but why do I care?

 

One of the things I did miss about loosing the large freezer in the dungeon is the lost of pallet storage. Yes, pallet storage. Not on the top of the freezer but in it.

 

I paint with oils. Often in the past, I had little time to paint. (that full-time job really got in the way of my play time!) One of the best ways to preserve an oil pallet when you know you will be away from it for a while is to freeze it. Freezing does not harm good quality oil paints. This is really helpful if you need to be away from painting for a long period and you want to preserve that special mixed color. Put a sheet of wax paper over the pallet (or another sheet if you use disposable paper pallets) push the excess air out and pop it in the freezer. I used to reserve the top shelf of the large freezer for this.

 

Now that I am retired from secular work, I usually can get back to a canvas in a reasonable amount of time, and with big projects I have taken to using a pallet box with a sealable lid. I line it with either freezer paper or a disposable pallet sheet. This will keep the paint workable for a couple of days, which is usually all I need. If I paint on Tuesday night, I know I will not be able to get back to it before Friday. I will mound up any paint on the pallet, and seal the lid. (these boxes are also available for acrylics and have a large sheet sponge.)

 

Often, however, I use a Styrofoam tray for a pallet. The kind that you get from the meat department. When I come home from the store, I always repackage the meat. That plastic they wrap the meat in is not good for it or you. Then if the tray is a good size, I will wash it with soap and water and let it dry. It goes down into the dungeon to be re-used as a pallet. You can clean and re-use it several time. You cannot use it for gesso however. Gesso eats it. I use the Styrofoam trays as a cheap portable pallet. It saves money I can dearly use for other art supplies.

 

I will go cheap for the furnishing and accessories for the studio. I find garage sales and thrift stores a good source of furnishings. Whenever I buy things, I look at the packaging and think, can I reuse this? Most of my dungeon accoutrements are recycled packaging, garage sale fines or even things I dumpster dived for.  But not for real art supplies.

 

I don’t go cheap for what I use to create artwork on or with. Experience has taught me that this is false economy. I will not use low-grade paint, pencils or support. I don’t use hardware store mineral spirits. I have culled cheap brushes. Supports must be high quality. But for my pallet? I will recycle. For large paintings I often use a sheet of freezer paper taped to the craft table I got when a local school threw it out in favor of the new plastic tables. It is a heavy Formica covered table that nothing can hurt. I love it. It weights a ton, but I can do just about anything on it. I can tape down the sheet of freezer paper, and when I am done, simply scrub it off. Nothing sticks. Also, nothing hurts it.  I have a lazy-susan on this table that I put my mediums on. I can always find what I need. You know those plastic trays that they sell for holding utensils? They are touted for caring silverware out to picnic tables. I picked up several at garage sales ( I guess they really don’t work well for this, you see them all the time) well, great way to keep brushes sorted.

 

I used those tin boxes that breath mints come in for kneaded erasers. I am sure you all can think of tons of things to do with those little boxes.

 

One of the best ways to carry my long brushes is in one of those cardboard wine bottle tubes. they are sold to carry a bottle of wine as a hostess gift.  They are sturdy and have a nice handle. And they will hold your longest brushes.

 

So I am happy to have a freezer again in the dungeon. Someplace to stash that pallet between painting sessions.

The Lament of a Messy Painter-

I have all these great ideas for art, for paintings, and drawings and even some crafty stuff, but:

The Dungeon!

I can’t paint because I can’t find my pallet!

The dungeon is a mess, a super-duper mess.

Filled with empty boxes, half-full boxes, suitcases, several ice chests, easels in various states of assemblage, several plastic shoe boxes of paints, one for standard oils, one for water mixable, a box with my pallet knives in it, and some containers of brushes, one broken brush holder, but my mom made it for me, so it is taped together, a drawing board that needs cleaning and aligning, frames, mats, but most of the mess is not my art supplies, there is a sort of organized chaos to them. Most of it has migrated from upstairs. My old bedroom linens, ea, queen sized comforter, sheets, pillowcases and an assortment of pillows, some decorator baskets, …are you bored yet?



I have been trying to clean it up!



We have been fixing the house up, and while construction is going on overhead, all the fallout seems to have fallen in the dungeon.



It is going to take me a month to clean all of this up!

My New Easel

New Easel next to old one

Most of us can’t afford to outfit our studios with top of the line materials and furniture.. What we can scrounge is what we have to live with.



Even a space to paint or draw is a luxury for most. Calling the space we carve out for ourselves a studio is giving grandiose important to that corner of the dining room or closet in the spare bedroom. For some this means a simple tabletop easel or the ubequdeous “student easel”, that cheap pine stick easel. You know the one, the folding tri-pod with the wing nuts.



That is what I have for years and years. Still have two in the dungeon. They hold a canvas at least as large as I usually paint. But these easels--for all that they are called “student” are hard to move around, and not particularly sturdy.



Much better is my aluminum field easel I invested in a couple of years ago when I start to teach and paint plein aire. It is collapsible and comes with a nice carrying case. This easel is ideal for moving around and has separately adjustable legs. And it holds the smaller boards I use plein aire easily. It is also handy for figure drawing class.



But back home in the studio, it was the pine-stick easel or nothing. Oh for a real studio easel. Something sturdy and that gives firm support to really large canvases or even boards!



This past year I got my wish in a surprising way; as a gift from my older sister. Now getting a gift from her is not in itself unusual. I don’t want you to think she is mean or anything. But she is a non-artist and freely admits to knowing nothing about art and art materials. Nothing at all. She did not even know the word easel, it is that stand-thingy.



My sister (with my mother) is a committed (or should be committed!) garage-saler. They approach garage sales with almost religious devotion. But as I said, she admits she has no idea what constitutes a good art supply or materials. She also have no idea about prices or values of such things.



But she is not one to let a little thing like lack of knowledge stand between her and a good deal! When coming upon a garage sale of a woman moving to smaller quarters she spied a number of things that kind of looked like they might be used for fine art? She fearlessly negotiated a fabulous deal!



Not only am I now the proud owner of a large aluminum studio easel, but a zippered, rolling craft cart/tote to hall things back and forth to the gallery for my classes, and a craft case designed for scrape booking, but perfect for holding a nice stash of art papers.

Studio Catastrophes

Disaster in the dungeon

or

What happens when people work in your domain without respect.

Over the last month, more and more boxes and things have ended up in the area known to many as The Dungeon, a.k.a, my studio. We are completing a major renovation upstairs, and the logical place to stash things temporally in the way is downstairs, this is especially important for things I am afraid others will not treat as delicately and carefully as it should be, such as my good china and crystal. But additional things seem to have found their way down there instead of out to the trash or recycle, such as the old bedding, various baskets and containers, both full and now empty boxes, paint cans, tape and assorted tools, none of which are mine.

Then the guys when down to work on the electrical wiring upgrades for the kitchen. They need to get to the fuse box, which was in the laundry room, next to the studio space. Well, when they started to route the new wires, they move the washer, putting the drain hose in the sink, when they put it back, you guessed it, the did not put the drain hose back in its pipe, but left it hooked over the sink, not securely.

I started a load of wash, and when it started to drain......

All over the place, the hose sprayed like a wild animal, not just down into the sink, but the pressure made it jump around soaking everything, including my clean clothes that were hanging up waiting to be taken upstairs or ironed, and the rugs, please don't mention the now dirty-water soaked rugs. It washed down my small cabinet I keep cleaning supplies in (which are now clean, but some not useable). Fortunately, or not, depending on your point of view, I heard it, came racing down the stairs, turned the corner, to get it in the face!

This is why I am not on top of the dungeon itself, which I need to be literally! All the mess had to be dragged out, and much of it landed in the area I fondly call my studio. So the Dungeon is a mess in which I cannot find my drawing table, much less my pallet. Until this mess is conquered, no art will happen down there.

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Working in a basement studio is not ideal, but the vast majority of artist work under less than idea conditions. That does not seem to affect the quality of work we can turn out. The almost stunning work that people through the centuries have done under really appalling conditions sometimes is a testament to the inner vision of the artistic mind