Studio Set-up: Sketchbooks (Patreon)

We return to the saga of my new studio! Furniture choices are going to have to wait until I decide how to handle the walls (which I think I want to repaint)… but the closet is fine the color it is, so I’ve started filling it.

My first challenge was that the wireframe shelving, while fine for clothes or large flat objects, is pretty awful for books. Husband and I went to the hardware store to see if we could replace them with something better without having to tear down the hanging system… but the choices were suboptimal. The pantry shelving was more tightly spaced, but only came in one depth, which was naturally too deep for the closet. There was a ‘bookshelf’ kit that ran the wires in the opposite direction—perfect!—but it only came as a single-size kit that was one foot too short for our needs (boo). And the “covers” they sold for the frames was a plastic roll that you clipped on, and it bowed upward and it was annoying to use and cheap-looking and I hated it.

So instead, we bought an enormous piece of wallboard and had it cut into strips. (Check out the awesome saw!) Setting those on top of the shelves fixed my problem perfectly. And for much cheaper than any of my other options: only $8 for the entire board, and I had left overs. (Versus, for instance, $8 for a single roll of that cheap plastic stuff, which fit only one shelf!)

Having solved the shelf problem, I started moving the sketchbooks. I gamed out some organizational schemes with folks on Discord, and decided to run them from left to right until the final shelf, which I would shelve backwards to put the latest sketchbook in the center of the closet. That way I wouldn’t have to go groping in the corner to find my most recent art. My post-college era sketchbooks only took up three four-foot shelves (only!), leaving me the last one for my mini-sketchbooks, which are half notes and half art. 

So:

• Top left shelf: from left to right, oldest to newest, stopping at Sketchbook 30ish.
• Top right shelf: from left to right, oldest to newest, from A through Z and then from AA to AU.
• Bottom left shelf: from left to right, oldest to newest, starting with Sketchbook 30ish and running to Sketchbook 80ish
• Bottom right shelf: from left to right, newest to oldest, starting with Sketchbook 129 and running to Sketchbook 80ish.

The bottom middle shelf I’m keeping for “most recent” stuff (and the language notebooks); the top middle shelf is going to be for tall portfolio books (right now they’re lying on their sides, because I don’t have bookends… those are on order).

Sadly, this does not take care of all my art: there are three bins of unorganized loose papers, several binders, and a stack of oversize portfolios. But this is the first time in over a decade that I’ve had all my sketchbooks lined up like this and it is glorious. I can’t express how relaxing it is, mentally, to know where everything is and see it sequentially lined up like this. Maybe the rest of it will be a little less perfect, but this right now is amazing.

Having set this part up, I am taking notes for optimization. I think one of the things I want to do is buy a few sets of bookends and use them halfway through each sketchbook shelf… that way when I pull one out, the whole weight of the row doesn’t fall into the open space. That makes it hard to get things out and put them back. I also need a couple more shelves at the very top, for things I don’t use often, so I’ll probably pick those up soon.

Our next step was making use of the bottom of the space, and for that I dragged one of my cube storage units in to serve as a bookcase. The top of the bookcase, which is nearer arm-height for me, I stacked with my novels, which I was in the habit of consulting more frequently prior to the implementation of the wiki; I’m not sure how that behavior will change but even if it does I believe in having back-ups and paper makes a good back-up. That left the 8 interior cubes for my reference books, and I managed to fit them all in.

I now need to decide on the spaces on either side of the bookcase, and the two shelves I want to put in at the top, and I think the closet will be ready. Or, I guess, the alcove, because it no longer has doors, and I kind of prefer the doorlessness. As long as I keep the closet this tidy I not only don’t mind having everything in it visible, I’m pretty proud of it.

There are some things swirling in my head about cataloging and documentation and how proper set-up makes that easier, but they haven’t solidified yet. For now, I’m glad to have made some progress. Next stop, hopefully, resolution of the painting issue, and then I can start moving furniture. My little cadre of animals will be glad of it, though for now they are content to sit and wait in joyful hope for the coming of their bookshelf. *grin*

Questions, comments, etc, welcome, as always! I will continue documenting the saga as I continue.