If you’re like me, your art studio is inside your home. This means we have different challenges to setting up our studio space than someone with any other type of art studio.
#1 Protect Your Floors
A canvas drop cloth can cover your carpet wall to wall! I like the waterproof type but I can’t always find those. Either way, choose heavy duty/10 oz over the lighter weight types. You’re going to put this under the furniture (which will hold it in place). You can then vacuum it as normal or throw area rugs over it to make it look nicer. This will keep the carpet in your studio paint/charcoal/pastel free. A heavy duty dropcloth will last for several years! You can pick these up at a hardware store or Amazon (afilliate links on this page)
#2 Lighting
A daylight led is great to make sure you’re seeing your colors accurately. This is the brand I use. Whatever you go with, choose one that has different power settings and is easy to move around so you can set it up in a way that avoids glare!
#3 TV Trays
These are great because they fold up easily when you’re not using them and they’re lightweight enough to move anywhere! I don’t use these TV trays to eat on, but to hold just about everything else when I need a random table next to my easel or to varnish paintings, or even to take quick photos in various areas of finished artwork or supplies.
#4 Easel
Avoid lightweight A frame type easels. They may be cheap…but that’s for a reason. They’re really only sort of useful (assuming there is no wind or anyone to bump into it) to display something indoors. If you try and paint on the lightweight version of these they fall over when you add pressure with the brush. On the other hand, an H frame easel, even one that is on the less expensive side of things will stay in place!
If you go with a table top version, these also tend to slide back when you add pressure. For these, pick up some grippy shelving liner and put a piece under the table top easel to keep it from moving around so much.
#5 Cheap Adjustable Shelves
I LOVE the HEJNE (a type of build your own shelf system) from Ikea. You can purchase however many shelves you want, the size of the legs for what height you want and build something totally custom to what you need. Want a shelf that will just hold 8×10″ canvases then 24×30″ canvases above that? You can do that! You can even choose between a couple of different shelf depth sizes. It makes it really easy to pack a lot of supplies in a small space! They’re unfinished wood so you can paint them if you want.
