Tysoe's Art Blog

Well this has been a good week. A couple of years ago I was really disappointed when an amazing Best Santa Fe II easel was advertised on craigslist for $200.  That’s over $1000 retail and brand new condition. At the time I was broke and simply couldn’t afford it. This time a Craftech Grand Easel turned up on Craigslist for $200. I had just bought the flooring a couple of days earlier which took care of my disposable income for the last month. But just in case, I contacted the seller and asked them to get back to me next month if they still had it.

Anyway, to cut a long story short they did have it 🙂 Here it is in the studio, had a hard time getting it through the door, this thing is BIG.

The amazing thing was that when I got there to pick it up, there was a matching painting table with storage drawer and flip top laminate glass palette, brush holding cups etc. The lady selling the easel asked if I wanted it.. Absolutely!  So I ended up with the easel and a free paint table.

So now I have all the furniture I could want for the studio. Feels a bit like winning the lottery. Not that I ever won the lottery but still 🙂

The easel and paint table are made by Craftech, pieces from their Grand Artisan Studio series of furniture. Looks fantastic in the studio and goes with the new floor very well 🙂

Last week I purchased some AC3 rated Laminate flooring, AC3 being the highest rated for residential purposes. Finally got to work on laying it down. The stuff is amazingly tough and dulled two circular saw blades. Took about 8 hours to do the underlayment and cut and hammer in the flooring.

Still have to seal the expansion gap with Silicone sealer then hide the gab with baseboard. And add a transition from the floor to the door threshold. I think it already looks pretty good 🙂

So Here’s the Studio with all the walls painted. Just need to get the floor done and then some trim here and there. It actually looks a lot bigger in person, but the camera doesn’t have a lense good enough to give you a decent impression.

I think it’s looking pretty good, Only concern with adding a floor is that the door opens flush with the concrete floor with no lower door frame to help keep the weather out.

I bought an outdoor lamp to light the way to the studio, energy star with dusk/dawn and motion sensor, so you can pretty much leave it, though it currently does use one of the three switches in the studio which allows you to make use of the manual override feature.

First thing I did was add wiring throughout the two garage walls, install light switches, some new beams to mount 4 foot flourescent light fixtures from.

After installing light fixtures I bought light weight tile backer wall board instead of drywall. This stuff is moisture resistant and thinner, lighter and comes in smaller sheets, easier for a individual person to work with on their own and cut with a utility knife.

Here’s the entrance to the studio from the back garden which is kind of nice 🙂

Here’s looking at the wall by the entrance before I got the mud out and started finishing the walls.  Check out my wife in the background 🙂

And here’s the rest of the studio, a bit of a mess, you can see one of my 4 foot tubes and the two Dazor Task lamps that produce excellent 98% accurate full spectrum lighting at 5300 kelvin temp. Was pretty pleased to find a second one at the local antique store for $50. You can still buy them with the same vintage design for $300 brand new. I like them so much better than the modern lights they sell in Art Supply shops. Discovered these from one of my old painting hero’s Frank Frazetta who used them for a good 50 years in his various studios as do many other illustrators today.

REALLY nice to have working electricity outlets in there now too, and able to see with half decent lighting too 🙂

First thing to be done was to get a better source of electricity through to the back studio portion of the garage. Previously there was a single conduit going through the middle of the roof from front to back with a single light switch and lamp fixture. Not at all adequate.

Here you can see the rerouted electricity cable in the conduit piping that enters the studio through the wooden framing on the left side.

Here you can see the old lighting, One thing that changed in this picture from the last time is that the drywall at the back of the room has been painted which makes the whole place a little brighter.

Notice the size of the cupboards, perfect for large A1 size portfolio cases and large canvases etc.

My wife and I bought a house earlier this year and moved in on the 5th or March. One of the criteria we put on our list was an extra room or space to use as a studio.

In the end we found an adorable little 2 bedroom house with a 2 Car Tandem Garage (where you park one car in front of another.

I haven’t been painting as much as I’d like the last few months but recently started doing up the back of the garage and converting it into a studio space.

This is pretty much how it looked when I first moved here, very dark and dingy with a wooden partition that I’ll probably keep but not much else.

Here’s looking inside on a very bright sunny day. The room had very inadequate lighting so overexposed the photo a little too.

Here you can see the 2×4 wooden framing, not too bad for a garage, but a lot of work needs to be done to make this a pleasant working environment.

It’s been a while since I posted up here. My wife and I recently bought a new house after many years or renting so I haven’t had much time or space to feel comfortable with painting.  I have a Tandem Garage that has the back end converted into a shed which will soon be my studio.

Anyway, I did move some of my stuff in there and continued my Skil Lorien character painting which you can see below.

Probably give it a final pass in a few weeks time. After it’s up on the wall a while, things start nagging at me till I have to take it down and rework it.

Here’s the preliminary underpainting for a new one where I have been trying to incorporate more figures into the composition.

16×20 Oil on Canvas

This one based on my D&D character. 16×20 Oil on canvas.

Ok so it’s no longer May, and back then there was a Creature feature at Wet Canvas where artists in the fantasy forum were invited to produce a image of a Naga.  A Naga is a creature from myth and legend. It has a human upper torso with a snake’s body below the waist. I originally sketched out a few quick rough ideas in my sketchbook and came up with a rough drawing. Soon after I drew the composition on canvas, roughed out an underpainting and then got a bit stuck.

As usual I focused on the creature but didn’t have much of a clue regarding what to do for a background. Anyway, over a month later I sat down and started painting and here’s a current work in progress photo. I’m actually quite pleased how this is turning out.

18″ x 24″ Oil on Canvas

You can see the original rough drawing for this painting below.