Organizing My Studio

It seems like every year after the holidays, my studio (a room in our finished basement) ends up being a mess. Part of the reason is because I also use that space for wrapping Christmas and Hanukkah gifts, which means that a lot of my art projects get temporarily moved out of the way. This disorganization is compounded by any gifts I receive over the holidays - whether they're art supplies someone has purchased for me, or art supplies I purchased myself - with gift cards or simply to take advantage of year-end/holiday sales.

This year, I felt like my studio space got particularly disorganized. I think it was because I spent most of 2015 doing many art projects upstairs, in the dining room, instead of down in my studio - because it was too hard to watch our puppy if I was working in the basement. There were too many nooks and crannies for her to get into and explore, including corners with dead bugs and paper and old paint cans and other things I didn't want her getting into. So instead of organizing and clean up so I could bring her down into my studio with me, I brought my art supplies upstairs. In hindsight, it was obviously procrastination. But at the time, I thought I rationalized it well.

So the studio got messy because I wasn't really using it as anything other than a staging area. I'd bring watercolor paints and brushes upstairs, then bring them back downstairs and pile them on the table in the studio while I grabbed some colored pencil supplies.

Long story short - I wanted my studio back. So over the course of a few weeks, I finally organized it.

There were piles of cardboard boxes all over the floor - boxes I was keeping to reuse for gift wrapping needs, or for shipping future artwork after it sold on Etsy. I moved these off the floor so Ginny wouldn't bite them. (When she's bored and looking for attention - as she often is if I'm down in my studio trying to work on some art - she likes chewing on cardboard.) I moved the old paint cans and spackle and sandpaper from house painting projects into another room in the basement, so I could shut the door and keep my puppy out. I organized my boxes of bubble wrap, and old picture frames, and other things that were just hanging around on the floor, too. And I vacuumed all the dead bugs and shards of glass and other dangerous things - all so that it would be safer for Ginny.

Once that was completed, I went about organizing my actual art supplies, so that I could find things easier. With my husband's help, I moved two white bookshelves from our living room to my studio. (They were only being partly used in the living room anyway.) I labeled the shelves and the boxes I put on the shelves.

I also organized the wrapping paper by hanging the rolls in a $8 shoe organizer we bought at Meijer. I organized the bows and all the other wrapping supplies, too, so that they weren't scattered all over the floor/shoved into a corner.

The studio is pretty nice now - I feel like I have some room to breathe down there. There is still more that needs to be done - I have a sewing table and sewing supplies that are still super disorganized on one of the walls - but at least my art supplies and wrapping supplies are well organized. As a result, I've done a lot more art in February and January than I was doing before. I've brought Ginny down with me while I painted. She still found some things to get into - biting the spongy insulation around the water pipes in an open closet, crawling behind the dryer (I share my studio with our laundry room), and yes, still eating the few cardboard boxes on the floor - but at least I cut down her possible poor decisions a little bit. Haha.

Here are some photos of my "new" studio -

On the table are some new acrylic paintings I'm working on; on the easel (left side) are the two patterned rose watercolors I started last year and haven't yet finished. Art supplies and wrapping supplies in the two tall white bookcases and in the white closet space.

The two white bookcases, which we moved downstairs from the living room

Bottom shelves - drawing supplies I rarely use on the left side (messy charcoal), and some misc. stuff on the right side (egg cartons for future craft projects, stencils, etc).
Second from the bottom shelves - drawing supplies I use more often on the left (pastels, my nicer colored pencils, graphite pencils, erasers, sharpeners, scissors, exacto knife), and some jewelry making supplies on the right

Middle shelves - drawing supplies on the left (markers, pens), then adhesives on the shelf above (glue sticks, liquid glue, glue guns, glue strips, spray glue, tape, staples, staple gun, fixative). On the right, misc. painting supplies (mediums, mixing containers, palettes) and, on the shelf above, watercolors (watercolor palettes, Daniel Smith tubes, Winsor & Newton tubes, and travel kits/cake watercolors in the larger box).

Top shelves - wrapping supplies on the left (bows, ribbons, gift tags, tissue paper), acrylic supplies on the right (paint tubes, sponges, brushes). The top right shelf is misc. decoupage supplies right now, which I still have to sort through.

The wrapping paper in the shoe organizer, hanging on the wall. Gift bags are in the box (larger ones are behind the wrapping paper), and small boxes are in the blue bag.

Cardboard boxes piled on top of our sump pump closet. And the white closet full of more art supplies to the left.

The closet. Until I moved the bookshelves down here, I had all my paints and drawing supplies crammed in here too. Now it's mostly paper and canvas.

The bottom shelf of the closet - misc. items I'm keeping to use in future still lifes or collages. Rocks, shells, drawing puppets, plastic flowers, baskets, beadwork, mirrors, fabrics, old paintings, a baby doll, etc.)

The scrapbook paper shelf, with 8 containers holding scrapbook organized by color.

The painting shelf. Canvases on the right, watercolor paper on top of the little shelf, acrylic paper on the bottom of the little shelf. On the far left, a box stuffed with craft supplies I didn't think I'd use much (ever) - glitter, puff fabric paint, etc, left over from my childhood. And a box of old computer labels that I use to label the backs of completed artworks (and many of the boxes/shelves in this newly organized basement!)

The top shelf of the closet - drawing paper. Sketchbooks on the right, construction paper on the bottom of the little shelf, and tracing paper on the top of the little shelf. Extra unused boxes on the left, for whenever I get more supplies/decide to reorganize everything again.

There are still some things on the floor - a cardboard box filled with old picture frames, and a cardboard box of wooden boxes and items for decoupage. They're stowed under my easel. Ginny can still (unfortunately) get to them, but I'm not tripping over them anymore at least.

Another shot of the table. I'm currently flattening some recent 5x7 watercolors under that pile of heavy books, and I'm working on some 8x10 acrylic paintings. You can see on the far right where the laundry closet is, and that crowded small table on the left is my 'sewing nook' - which I still have to organize. (The sewing machine is, as you can see, still in the box.)

It's Not a Step Back, but a Reevaluation

I've been busy with editing my novel manuscript lately, so I haven't done much artwork, and the artwork I have done are small 4x6, 5x7, or 8x10 works. (The leaf paintings I've been posting about the last several days were completed a few weeks ago - they were being flattened under stacks of heavy books for awhile, and then I had to mat them and take all the photographs and I only just recently got them up here on the blog and on Etsy.)

It's been a couple months since I started those two larger patterned rose paintings and for several weeks I've kind of been "stuck" - procrastinating on working on them.

2 Rose Watercolor Paintings In Progress - by Andrea Arbit

The reason for my stalling is this - I'm at a point with these paintings where I've put so many layers down that it's hard to see the pencil lines underneath, particularly in the centers of the roses, where the shadows are darker. These paintings are not stapled down, so I could easily redraw some of those lines (maybe even try to retrace them, if the autumn-winter sun would ever be bright enough to penetrate through the layers of paint and let me). But that seems like extra work - to go back to the drafting and planning part of the painting. And I haven't felt like taking that step backward.

I mean, the solution is clear - swallow my pride and take the extra hour to "replan" where to go from here. Consider the pieces as a whole and make decisions and plot a course for bringing these "in progress" paintings into the end-zone. I just haven't wanted to take the time to do that.

It occurred to me that this is not unlike where I'm at with editing my manuscript. I've already planned out the story and used that plan to write the story. I've even already edited it (several times). But now I'm going through and re-reading it again, so that I can evaluate what's working and what isn't, and pare things down to let the essence better shine through. And maybe it's just the nature of the beast that the editing is more tedious and less fun than the writing parts, but also I think I haven't been enjoying it as much because I keep getting into this mindset that going through and making these edits is a "step back." I think - I should have gotten this right the first time, but instead I have to go back through and revisit it. And of course it's not going to be enjoyable if I think about it like that!

Lately I've been trying to focus on the parts that are working. It's not that I should have just "written it right the first time" - it's that I did write it right the first time, but then I covered up the good stuff with mediocre stuff like a pirate burying his treasure, and now I'm digging back through to uncover the treasure and let it shine. It's not really a step back, it's just part of the process.

And I need to think about my larger artworks in that same way. It's not a step back to look at the painting as a whole and make decisions about where it needs to go from here. I did it all the time in my college studio classes - we were required to. We even had to do it in front of everyone. We all hung our paintings on the wall and critiqued our own stuff and critiqued each other's stuff, while it was still in progress, so that we could incorporate critique epiphanies into the painting before it was too overworked to allow further changes. In the case of art critique, it is literally a step back, since we walk away from the piece to see what is working from a distance, but it is not metaphorically a step back - as in, progress the "wrong way." It's just part of the process. Reevaluation is necessary to get to the finished product. No one "gets it right" the first time without taking that reevaluation step.

Life is often interpreted as a race. We start at the starting blocks and end at the finish line. Time is linear. We march forward along its line, and that's it. But who actually lives life that way? (And how boring would it be if we did?) Life is more like a dance than a race. We're not always moving in the same direction. We turn, we spin. We double back. And that's okay.

Completing projects are like little lives - whether they're manuscripts being written or watercolors being painted. They don't surge forward without break, without consideration, without the occasional pause to reevaluate where they're going. I need to stop thinking about these breaks as taking a step back (as if that were a bad thing!) and I need to stop letting myself procrastinating working through the important things that need to be recognized and dealt with. It has to be done, but it doesn't have to be a chore, and it's certainly not worth getting anxious about.

Why It's So Hard To Get Things Done

Why is it so hard to focus on the art and writing I want to do and actually have productive days?

In one word: Ginny.

Just look at that cute little face!!

Pay attention to me, mommy!

In several more words:

Okay, so I still had a "getting things done" problem before we adopted Ginny. But one of the reasons we adopted her is so we would have a "scape-puppy" - and so I intend to use her that way now. (Like a scapegoat, but she's a puppy. Get it? We're so clever.)

In all seriousness though, reasons for procrastinating include but are not limited to:
- No one holding me accountable for getting shit done, since I work at home on my own schedule
- Making the WRONG decision to wait around until "creativity" strikes and I'm in the mood to work
- Being paralyzed by worries that my painting won't turn out good, etc. - so why is it worth the time and effort that go into it?
- Convincing myself that no one actually cares about my paintings or my writing anyway - even if they do turn out good - and so why is it worth the time and effort that go into it?

Defeatism, basically.

And the only way to combat these things is to try holding myself accountable, try convincing myself to follow a schedule and do the work and put in the time, try telling myself that that's just my low self-esteem talking, and the painting probably will turn out good, and someone out there is reading this blog, and people do find the stuff I create and like it and respond to it - even if they don't respond to me and let me know.

So I try to acquire evidence. Quotes from people who have liked something I've done, sales receipts to remind me that people have bought my artwork in the past, etc. And then, when I get into a defeatist way of thinking, I pull out that evidence and make myself read it to remind myself that my negative thinking has no basis in the actual situation.

And also I play with my puppy. Because she's adorable and makes me happy. :)