Sunday, March 30, 2008

Ten Tips

Snow on Heath
7.25" x 9.25"
Pastel
Casey Klahn


Studio Tips

  1. Have as many drawing boards going as you can find. Birch boards, Gatorfoam Board, Fome Core, .5" Sturdy Board, etc.
  2. An extra easel or two set up in your studio helps you to enjoy/agonize over more than one image at a time. It facilitates creating a series.
  3. Divide a full sheet of paper up with several image spaces, and do more than one painting at a time using different compositions, but the same colors.
  4. Pin your studies up on a wall or bulletin board so you can refer to them.
  5. Need table space? Alternately, you might just want the floor space. Knock down tables of all sizes are an essential for me. You can make your own with a leg set from Home Depot.
  6. If you haven't made that waist high, 7 foot by 2 foot table for holding your palettes, what's keeping you? Mine allows tables underneath, which is a huge extra footprint.
  7. Irwin brand clamps, all sorts, are great for sticking studies and drawing boards onto other boards or edged places.
  8. My large studio easel has a 32" x 46" sheet of plywood mounted on it almost all of the time. Because we seal the back of our frames with black construction paper, I was able to enclosure the front side of the plywood with this light absorbing, tape-loving wrap. Now, I can quickly tape a small piece of Wallis directly to the construction paper, or I use the 2" Irwin clamps to add a Gatorfoam Board with a properly mounted sheet of pastel paper.
  9. In your father's day, a dull pocket knife was a sin. Get a Stanley utility blade dispenser and tack it on the wall so your utility knife is always happy. My wife, the framer, and I fight over this little jewel.
  10. Since I don't have a stereo system in the studio, my wife got me a deluxe speaker system for me PC and now I can enjoy tunes that way. The speaker set has two midbass, tweeters, and a subwoofer.

7 comments:

pattrsnd said...

Love this Casey...very impressionistic!

Casey Klahn said...

Thanks, David. My wife had a hard time getting the photo right with the gray la Carte color underneath. So, some day I'll post it again with correct colors.

Sara Mathewson said...

Beautiful painting Casey.
Great tips. my husband and I are taking the show on the road so to speak. We are moving from our house in NM to live full time in a motorhome. So, I will be downsizing my studio quite a bit. We will be blogging about our travels and will have podcasts and pics of the places etc. Should be a wonderful experience and I plan to paint as many of the places as I can.

Sara
saramathewson.com
creativetribe.tv

Lindsay said...

Thanks for the tips Casey. Vivien has been mentioning your book on her blog but I can't seem to find the link. I'd love to see it!

Casey Klahn said...

Great adventure, Sara!

The book is listed under the label: My Book, at thecolorist.blogspot. Thanks for looking, Lindsay.

Eden Compton Studio said...

I LOVE this painting Casey! It reminds me a bit of an Albert Pinkham Ryder painting. (Thanks for the tips as well!)

Casey Klahn said...

Thanks, Eden.