Five Studio Must Haves - Carolyn J Roberts Artist

“The longer you have to wait for something, the more you will appreciate it when it finally arrives. The harder you have to fight for something, the more priceless it will become once you achieve it. And the more pain you have to endure on your journey, the sweeter the arrival at your destination. All good things are worth waiting for and worth fighting for.”

— Susan Gale

There’s a tiny frisson of excitement, a sense of ‘I am getting there.’ All the months of dreaming, imagining, planning - at last they are coming to fruition. The longer term aim is for my OH to construct a purpose-built studio in the garden, but for now, this small space attached to the garage has become my ‘art studio’! And how good does it feel to have a space to call one’s own, to be able to splash around to my heart’s content AND to leave all the materials out ready for the next session…

Cup of coffee - studio essential — ***Studio essential…***

And whilst there’s a certain reluctance to unpack all of my materials, I can at least arrange my favourite, most used items… Which got me to thinking - what must an art studio have? What couldn’t I live without?

First and foremost, and I know this won’t be the same for everyone, but I couldn’t start in the studio without a cup of coffee! It’s wrong to say that I can’t function without coffee, but it certainly helps!!

Brushes & mark making tools — ***Art Materials…***

Secondly; art materials - of course! Whether that’s a selection of my favourite mark-making tools, ranging from brushes, palette knives, sticks, feathers and twigs, to pigments and mediums; watercolour, acrylic ink (favourite Daler Rowney FW Acrylic ink in Payne’s Grey or Sepia), charcoal, Art Graf etc. Plus the all important paper, concertina sketchbooks or other surface…

Thirdly, and here I will admit to being torn between storage systems or an endless supply of water… As you can see, I chose storage. This is because, that no matter that my art appears very free and expressive, I absolutely cannot work if everything else is in a mess! This trolley has proved invaluable; keeping all of my most used materials close by whilst I worked on top of the washing machine. Now it stands beside my work bench, again with a selection of favourite materials close at hand.

Fourthly; inspirational sources and ideas. I don’t create from a vacuum. My ideas have their origins from the landscape and nature, so I like to have a selection of images, words, thoughts etc on a ‘mood board’. This changes regularly, and can include a variety of things; from photos of my travels, to colour swatches, postcards, maps, flyers, social media images, interesting paper wrappers (!), quotes, different text and fonts, my sketchbook pages and notes…and so on… I like to have objects as reminders of my travels: a lichen-covered twig transports me back to Scotland, the breeze rustling through the trees, sheep bleating on the hillside and a buzzard calling, circling round, or a selection of shells collected on a windswept coastal walk. A small library of my favourite books also sits on the shelves…

Fifthly; last but definitely not least. Again, I was undecided between a number of options; a comfy chair to sit and ‘think’, a heater (I cannot be cold!), a carpet to stand on, (again, I can’t bear cold feet), a kettle for an endless supply of said coffee, an apron, in a vain attempt to protect my clothing, a tripod to hold the camera so that the videos are not ‘shaky’. Or my phone for watching YouTube videos. Or music; soothing or more upbeat depending on my mood. Or a podcast (see list below for some of my favourites). But in the end I decided that one of the most important things to have was TIME - that most precious of commodities. Time to wander, time to investigate, to absorb, to gather, to experiment, to explore…