studio upgrades and pure adorableness

Okay, first off I forgot to post pics of the studio updates a couple of days ago. I posted them on the engraving forums but not here. Oops! So, as I had mentioned, the table/platform of the drill press was larger than it needed to be, and that made it hard to sit close enough to it. You really need the vise pretty much in your lap. As a reminder, it looked like this:

My fantastic, kindhearted, generous, brilliant neighbor took the turntable and drill press table home with him for a weekend, cut down the circumference of the drill press table, permanently mounted the turntable to the drill press, and brought it back looking like this (the ball vise is not in place in these pics):


Glee! So much better. I can sit like a normal person when working, also thanks to the new chair I bought, which I think is the perfect engraving chair (I'll totally endorse it, it's the Casdin Luxura chair from Staples, love it).

Now I just need to learn how to engrave. Okay, one step at a time...

I remembered to photograph the leaf today:

My brother J came over with the cutest baby in the universe today. I have to share this cuteness with you. Last time she saw my horses she wasn't old enough to be aware of them. Oh that's changed! She's almost 7 months old now, and I think I'll be able to turn her into a horse-crazy little girl no problem! The cuteness overwhelms me! :-) By the way those are not my hands in the second pic.


I've signed up for two birding tours at the crane festival this weekend. Brace yourself for full bird nerd mode!!!

it needs work

Well, I got to test drive the new studio setup today. It needs work. I knew it would, but it's still kind of disappointing. For one thing, I am going to have to get another chair right away. My drafting chair does not go down low enough for me to actually rest my feet on the floor (which is fine for drawing, I have a footrest under the drawing table). But I need my feet on the floor for engraving because the airgraver is controlled with a foot pedal. And I want a chair with a shallower seat, so I don't feel like I have to perch on the edge of the chair.

A side note about chairs, it's very strange for me to actually be able to roll around in them. Wood floor, neato! I must be careful, I've crashed into a few things already. ;-)

And the platform on the drill press is kinda bigger than it needs to be. It only needs to be big enough to hold the base of the blue turntable, but it's much larger than that. To be ergonomically correct (or at least somewhat close, I think true correctness may be impossible in this job) one needs to have the ball vise essentially in one's lap it seems to me. I can't quite get that close to it right now, which makes me lean too far forward in order to see the microscope. I am investigating options for reducing the size of the platform (in other words I'm hoping my brilliant engineer neighbor can help with that).

In the mean time, I met with a client this afternoon and got approval on a sketch for a small drawing. So I'm going to be cranking that out in the next few days. I'll show it in progress once I start.

Studio 4.0, an evolution (lots of pics)

Done! I haven't tried doing any work yet, but from the looks of things the new studio ought to be up and running. I do plan on buying another chair but unless I simply can't deal with the height of the old chair, that purchase will wait a little while.

So today I will entertain you with the tale of the ever-evolving studio.

Between about 2001 and early 2007, I had only a drafting table, and two sets of storage drawers. I worked only in colored pencil and graphite, and kept my pencils right on the table top. The piano used to be against the wall to the right of the window. There was a tall bookcase to the left of my drafting table, out of the frame of the photograph:


As time went on, I decided I'd like to start painting in addition to drawing, plus I also needed some storage shelves for paper and finished prints, etc. The drafting table didn't change much, except the pencils moved from the desktop into some small wooden drawers on top of the plastic drawers to the left of the table itself. The piano and bookcase switched places. I placed an easel in the corner to the right of the drafting table, and refinished an old set of shelves (the thing with the draped canvas sides) for holding paper. This is from March 2007:


That summer, I started doing scrimshaw, but was working across the field in my neighbors' barn, since they had a microscope and I did not at that time. It worked well for starting out, but wasn't the best work space since I had to tote everything back and forth every day, plus I wasn't able to put in any hours late at night or any time when they weren't home. By March 2008 I had my own scope, and got a second drafting table on which to set all that stuff up. So, the drawing table didn't move. I put in an area rug to kind of contain the space and keep the good carpet in good condition. The easel moved right behind my drawing table, and got its own little set of drawers for paint storage. I placed a new drafting table against the wall to the right of the window, and turned the bookcase out away from the wall. The large storage shelves and a set of flat files were (and still are) located in a different part of the room. There were a few gradual changes after this, like adding another small set of drawers to hold some scrimshaw equipment, but it stayed this way until this weekend! So here's March 2008:


And then I wanted to get into engraving metal, and this setup didn't work. Major changes were needed. I needed a stronger engraving bench, and most importantly some sort of stand on which to place the engraving vise so that there would be no wobble whatsoever (if you're working on something under a microscope, and it moves at all, it's horrible to look at). Sooooo, I took a bunch of photographs of what transpired in the last few days.

We start out with absolute chaos, the "between projects and I know I'm going to change all of this so who cares if I make a big mess" kind of chaos. I'm a little embarrassed by this, but I'll get over it.

Painting stuff and storage drawers moved out of the way:

Old drafting table removed (I'm standing in a mass of clutter taking these pics):

New drafting table cleaned off (what I was using for scrimshaw) and ready to be moved into position as new drawing table:

New drafting table in place, new engraving bench assembled:

Rod working on installing the drill press stand:

Drill press stand installed, but there are too many layers of stuff on the floor, that area rug needs to come out:

Rod had gone home by this point, so it was just me and the power tools. Floor boards cut and installed, extending under new drawing table:

Had to move all the furniture off the wood floor. So tired...

First coat of stain/varnish down. I finished the second coat around 12:30am Saturday night.

Furniture back in place:

Getting the lights and storage back into place:

Uh, where is all this stuff going to go?

I decided to pack up the painting supplies. The easel now is in the garage, but can be brought in as needed (probably not going to be needed much, I don't do much painting). And I decided to keep the old drafting table. All my paints and brushes are underneath it. It's coming along:

Done! As you can see, it's a long narrow space, definitely a studio made for one!

I love it!

Old drafting table finds a new job as a permanent home for the papercutter and cutting mat, and can be used as a general work surface as needed. This all does stick out a bit farther into the room than Studio 3.0, but there wasn't really any way around that.

New drawing table, bigger and better!:

New engraving bench with a cut off drill press stand holding the vise. There will eventually be another set of drawers and a new chair here:

The drill press stand becomes a vise stand:

And of course I had to do something girlie to it, so I stuck a flower in the top of the cut-off pipe. :-)


So that's it! It was way more work than I anticipated (mostly because of putting in a new floor). But it actually came together much more quickly than I had expected. Sure, there will be some changes as I work in the new space and get a feel for it, but I don't expect anything major to change. Let's hope not anyway!

I am toying with the idea of doing an "open studio" event, like an open house. Has anyone ever done something like that? [EDIT: I'm not considering that anymore, it was a passing notion, and it passed.]

my everything hurts

I'm running on fumes (uhh, literally, I just did some varnishing) but wanted to post with a progress report. Oh golly this is a lot of work, more than I expected. I started tearing things apart and cleaning on Thursday. My friend Rod was here yesterday through this morning and knows how to do all this mechanical stuff so we got tons of work done and got the drill press stand all set up and the new bench assembled. I had to make another trip back to town today for more lumber, since it ended up being necessary to put down a new floor (on top of the existing carpet in the room, but I did take out my 6x10' area rug. So I just finished the second coat of varnish on the new floor (I was not planning on a new floor!) and every square inch of me seems to be sore and I'm soooo tired. These have been very very very very busy days.

I have been taking lots of photographs, from chaos to more chaos to clearing to new arrangements. I think it'll still take several more days to get it finished, and right now the rest of the room is crammed full of my art stuff and totally unusable (there is a drafting table 4 inches from my left elbow, that's NOT where it goes!)

Current dilemmas:

1) What to do with my old drafting table that I've had since high school. It has been my drawing table all those years, but is now replaced by a much larger (YAY! That had been an issue!) and stronger table (the one I WAS using for engraving). One option is to keep it, though there really isn't room in here for what would now be THREE tables, so that might be a moot point. Have there been times when I've wished for two tables so I could work on two drawings? Yes. But with the biz moving toward engraving and what was apparently my heyday of illustration work now several years behind me, those days might be over. The other option is to sell it. There's absolutely no other place in the house to put it.

2) What to do with my painting stuff. I'm not sure it'll fit within the confines of the new floor. It could sit on the carpet though with a dropcloth as needed. Or, since I haven't painted since April, maybe I ought to throw all my paints into a box and stick them in the closet and fold up my easel and stash it somewhere else. It would certainly unclutter this area if all those supplies went away. I'm not saying I'd never paint again, just that it would be available on an "as needed" basis.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I may wake up by Monday.

just a tease

I'm writing this first so I don't forget. I know that maybe 2 people in the universe are wondering, so no I am unfortunately not going to be showing at the National down in Ventura this weekend. I wish it would have worked out, but I have nothing to show. I'm going to wait til late winter/early spring to sell birds (please oh please don't anyone email and me what I'm selling, I don't know). Anyway, considering all that, I really couldn't justify making the trip. Sorry. :-(

I finished the almost-matched set of Colt .45 SAA pistol grips tonight, woo hoooooooo!! Well, technically I guess it's morning. *Yawn* They look AWESOME. I'll post what I can when I can. Here's a little tease though in case you have forgotten how teensy these things are. My thumb volunteered to pose for size reference:

Meet my new engraving vise stand:

You're thinking "but wait, that's a drill press." Yes, yes it is. And it's mine! Actually, the one in the box to the right is mine, but it'll look just like that one. And in fact I'm only using the lower part, the base and part of the post, and most importantly that round platform thingy. A friend of mine is going to use the top part... what most people would consider the functional part! So it was a little interesting explaining this at the store today...

checkout lady: would you be interested in the 3 year protection plan?
me: no thanks
guy helping me haul the thing: ooh, you really should, it's a good deal
me: well..... okay I hate to say this, but I'm actually going to have it cut in half. I'm using the lower half as part of an engraving bench, and a friend is taking the upper half to turn it into a radial drill press.
(flabbergasted people faces)
guy helping me haul the thing: wow, that is amazing
checkout lady then asks me to explain engraving and how this drill press helps me

I have to say it was pretty fun to say "I'd like to buy that drill press." Those words don't escape me too often.

Okay, so I'm not doing any scrim tomorrow, unless it's just a few more dots if I need to touch up the grips at all. I have 4 projects to sketch out, so I'll do that, plus some paperwork to catch up on. And I should probably start cleaning up the studio. The more organized it is, the easier it will be to take things out and put them back, currently scheduled for this weekend. Ooh new table should arrive tomorrow!

I'm putting flannel sheets on my bed, it's time. Tonight. And then I'm going to go to bed and I'm not getting up early.

Where the magic happens?

People often ask me where I work. I think they imagine I must have some grandiose studio. I don't, and in fact I get major studio-envy when I see people who do (they can spread stuff all over the place!). My studio is located in a corner of the front room. I have a drafting table, chair, some storage space, shelves, etc. I am working on refinishing another set of shelves for flat-files but that's a work in progress. To the right of my table is a very nice piano that nobody ever plays, so I stash stuff on top of there too, and often prop up artwork on it so I can sit at my table and see artwork from somewhere other than 12 inches away from the surface (have to get a different perspective on things sometimes). I am supposed to keep it pretty tidy but that really only happens when we are hosting poultry meetings or parties. Around art show times, it looks like a tornado has gone through.


Here's a pic I took this afternoon right before starting work on revising the Large Old English sketches. Hee hee, you can see some of the completed work on the piano. I think it's small enough there that I won't get hollered at for posting it on line! :-)