Studio Progress: Painting! (Patreon)

We return to the saga of the new jaguar studio! Some Big Next Steps were taken, so I am excite.

BOOKENDS

Okay, maybe bookends don’t seem like a very exciting thing to other people, but stick with me here. Those rows of sketchbooks are only as useful as my ability—and desire—to pull them out… and without the bookends, I have two problems: first, that if I’m not careful, I will shove the stack and the books on the end will topple off the edges of the shelves (which do not reach the walls); and second, when I pull a book out, the entire stack immediately flops into the empty space, which means to get it back in place I need to wedge my hand in and shove (see: problem #1, toppling off end of shelf).

Buying bookends for 80+ pounds of sketchbooks, most of which are 9x12 (and some of which are even larger) is not as straightforward as clicking on the first thing that looks useful, though, because most bookends are designed for reading books, which tend to be shorter. After some research, I found these, which were taller than average (10 inches!) and purportedly strong enough to hold ‘the complete works of Shakespeare, or all your volumes of Dostoevsky,' which sounded about right.

The results are wonderful. They are, in fact, tall enough not to topple over, and strong enough for a row of 40+ sketchbooks, and now when I grab one of them I can leave a hole open to replace it without worrying. It’s the little things, y’all. They’re not so little.

But speaking of little, I got a set of boring, small bookends for my fiction bookshelf, and those work fine too. Another box checked off the to-do list.

PAINTING

But the elephant in the room was the paint job. This room was intended as a bedroom, which means it got the bedroom paint scheme: the same cream that all the house walls are done in, but with a soothing sage green accent wall. It was a very pretty green, very muted, and intended to soothe excitable nerves. If you wake up in the middle of the night, it’s a color that says ‘nothing interesting here, close those eyes again.’ And it was painted on the wall directly across from the window, so all the sunlight bounced off it and gave the room a faintly greenish cast. Like being in a dewy forest.

Needless to say, I do not want “put you to sleep” colors in a room I want to work in. Worse, the wall facing the window is the one I want to draw against, and having that greenish cast on whatever I’m painting is not ideal. Though I don’t love painting walls, it had to go. The “accent wall” had to be redone in the neutral house color, to keep from distracting me color-wise, and one of the other walls had to become the new accent wall, and it had to be a cheery color and that color, I decided, would be blue.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking (some of you, at least). “Isn’t blue a relaxing color??” And it is! But there’s blue like the soporific grayish color of the sky when it’s raining, and then there’s blue like punch-you-in-the-face summer sky, and I wanted the cheery brightness of a summer sky. Both because it’s uplifting, and because it’s also a little bit relaxing… because I’m a highstrung kind of jaguar, and a color that can be energizing but also calm is a good thing, particularly for the wall my computer is against. Nothing says “re-think that angry email” quite like a happy blue sky.

My last decision point was that there isn’t a blue wall in the house yet, and I want something different. So granted that, I got about 30 paint chips and narrowed it down to four, and from there to two that I got samples on to paint on the wall. My family and friends looked at it and said, “You should pick the one on the left!”

But me? Oh no, not me! I checked that wall in six different lighting conditions before I made my decision: in the morning, with indirect light; at noon, with the reflected light from various halls; during the diffuse light of a light rain; during the brooding light of a storm; at night with the standing lamp on; and at night with the closet light (a document-toned bulb) on. I made my decision based on which of the two colors appealed to me in the most lighting conditions and it was…

…the one on the left.

…

At least my method had SCIENCE.

Painting the two walls was the work of about five hours, most of it ‘we don’t remember how to do this, let’s look it up' time, and a lot of time in prep. Covering the green wall was the most time-consuming part, because every inch of that wall that wasn’t properly double-coated looked a little weird. The blue wall, in comparison, was a snap. 

I am very happy with that blue wall.

The resulting room has a much different character emotionally; it looks cleaner and happier, more like a place you’d do things, rather than a place you’d lie down. But not in a frenetic, orange-or-red way, in a ‘take your time and smile while you work’ kind of way. And as importantly, the lighting has changed dramatically. Having the longest wall in the studio a brighter color makes it noticeably brighter in the room; since that wall also receives the light from the window, it’s the wall most responsible for reflecting light everywhere in the room, both in intensity and color temperature. The room feels larger and less enclosed with a paler, more neutral tone doing the bouncing.

Also, I love my blue wall.

CAT SUPERVISOR

The cat continues to think I can do nothing without his close supervision, usually while sleeping, so if I lay something soft down he will sit on it. Managerial privileges and all that.

NEXT STEPS

We’re getting close to the point where I can treat this room as my primary place of work. Next up: furniture! I’ll have another post as that develops.

This is also the point where it occurs to me that a micro-Kickstarter would be good. The goal would be to make a dent in my expenditures… and also to buy new art supplies, because I plan to go into oil painting again now that I have my own space! If I do run that Kickstarter (and I think I will), I expect it to be a very low target—maybe $500—and for it to run a short period, and for very few prizes: probably ‘access to the project blog, a postcard, and an original tiny painting or two.’ I’ll keep you updated on that if I decide to do it. But I think it might be fun! Who doesn’t love going to the art store to pick out supplies, even virtually over someone’s shoulder??

So that’s where we’re at! Things are proceeding. I am super excite!