I love seeing other artists’ spaces, and got just such an opportunity when Farrell Brickhouse posted pics of his friends’ palettes on Facebook a while back. They have now been reposted on Sharon L. Butler’s blog, Two Coats of Paint, so you can see them, too.
I’d love to have so much space. Last weekend at the encaustic workshop at Majestic Ranch, I got to work in a large, airy well-lit studio, on a large table with plenty of space for all my tools, palette, painting panels, and miscellaneous extras. It really helped my workflow.
Back at home, as you can see from these two pics, things are a bit more crowded. And this is just my space for drawing and working in encaustic. I also have an easel or two for painting in oil and acrylic, a couple of taborets, storage space under my table, and loads of art supplies, tools, canvases and paintings, etc. shoved into the closet and various other locations in the house and garage.
When we bought our current house, I thought I could try working in the back half of the garage, but for various reasons — absence of heat in winter, cool in summer, air and light all year round, and only one electrical outlet; plus presence of mosquitoes and other bugs, a much too-low ceiling beam, and the occasional flash flood pouring across the hard cement floor — I gave up on that and moved my studio, bit by bit over time, into my office, where I also do my digital freelance work.
So I get half-a-room for art, which still isn’t too bad.
The David Hockney version of my studio/office in a cleaned up, but still half-painted, state
What is your studio like? What challenges do you have to overcome to work in your space? Or, have you been able to build, buy or rent the perfect studio for you?
I’d love to see pictures, so please post a link! Or if you’d like me to post yours here, send me your pics and I’ll post as many as I get sent.
Confetti
Encaustic on Panel
10″x10″
This one is very highly textured, and looks really amazing in person.
As promised, here are 6 of my new encaustic paintings — 5 of these were begun at last weekend’s encaustic workshop at Majestic Ranch. I completed them and created one new painting (so far) after returning home.
(untitled)
Encaustic and Mixed Media on Panel
10″x10″
Blue Marble
Encaustic on Panel
10″x10″
Beezebra
Encaustic with Collage and Image Transfer on Panel
10″x10″
Lime
Encaustic on Panel
10″x10″
This one is rather minimal, but I love it! It could be part of a diptych with the preceding or succeeding piece.
Green Sky
Encaustic and Collage on Panel
10″x10″
I’ve got 3 more in progress and will post them as soon as they are completed.
I spent this past weekend with ten other members of the Austin group of Texas Wax in an encaustic painting workshop at Majestic Ranch in Boerne, TX. Boerne is a lovely little Hill Country town located not too far from San Antonio. Majestic Ranch is an Arts Foundation atop a hill with classrooms for painting, printmaking, ceramics, photography, sculpture and more. It also includes a pavillion and gazebo…and many breathtakingly beautiful views of the Hill Country. When R&F comes to Texas, this is where they hold their workshops.
Early Saturday morning, I met up with the other Texas Wax artists in the hilltop classroom for the two day, all-day workshop. It was wonderful — kind of like being back in advanced studio classes at art school — each of us working on our own creative projects, and meanwhile chatting with other members of our art tribe. Only this was over in just 2 days instead of a whole semester, so there wasn’t much chance to watch each other’s creative development, nor to get to know each other much better. We did hang out for awhile after the Saturday workshop, over dinner and a beer at a brewpub in Boerne.
It was so great to share techniques and tips with the other encaustic artists. Daphne Holland showed me how to use the little BernzOmatic torch, which is the tool I had been needing all along, but I had envisioned something much bigger and feared setting the house on fire. This is basically just a bigger butane lighter, and can be used to really localize your heat source without blowing the paint all around (depending on your technique). Roxie McCloskey demonstrated how to do an image transfer (the proper way) — something I’ve been wanting to do, but my first experience with it had been excrutiating, so I’d avoided it since then. It doesn’t have to be painful, it turns out. 
I had brought ten 10″x10″ panels with me, all my encaustic tools and supplies, and what I thought was plenty of paint. I actually ran out of 2-3 colors on day one, so I couldn’t complete a few paintings that I had started that day. The second day was a much more productive day for me, and I came away with 1 finished and 6 other nearly finished paintings.
I want to thank Roxi McCloskey and Daphne Holland for organizing this event, and Majestic Ranch for allowing us to hold our workshop at their wonderful facility. And my husband for driving us down there, bringing me lunches, keeping me company at the lovely little Acorn B&B, and being the really super great guy that he is!
You can see some pictures from the workshop at the Texas Wax website. Tomorrow I’ll post pictures of the pieces I have finished so far.
