Why Organize Your Studio Space

'Desert Cool'            8x10         pastel       ©Karen Margulis

It must have been the wide open spaces of the Southwest. I felt it as soon as we arrived in Marietta and the trees formed a tunnel over the road. It was a bit claustrophobic. The feeling continued when I went down into my studio.  There was stuff everywhere!  Good stuff like pastels, paints and paper but it was out of control. I longed for a big open space with lots of light.

I'm not really complaining. I live in a beautiful green place and I have a wonderful large studio space. But it was in desperate need of an overhaul.  I needed to organize my supplies so that I could be more efficient and so that I could make better use of my space. I have a plan but it is going to take some work.

Today was the day to start. I have students coming in a week so I have time to get things back in order before my class.  Here are some of the before shots and my thoughts on why organizing your space will help you paint better!

My working studio

My outer studio used mainly for storage since it has no heat or air

My goal for this overhaul was to make more space for students to move around. I will be getting some easels and tables so that students won't need to bring their own. The work stations will be around the outer edges of the room so that we can stand at an easel and easily back up to see our work.

I also want to make space to leave my oil and acrylic supplies out in addition to my pastels. So I will now have two stations...one for pastels and another for oils and acrylics. I will call this area the 'no excuses' easel.  There  will be no more excuses for not doing oils or acrylics since it will all be out and handy!

I am feeling much better despite the piles of supplies scattered about. I know it will be back in order soon.

• Sometimes an unorganized studio space can prevent you from actually painting. It can be paralyzing or you might spend too much of your time cleaning and organizing your space and not painting in it.
• Coming into a clean and organized studio space is like staring a fresh canvas. It is a fresh new beginning. I am back from my trip inspired and filled with new ideas so I need a fresh space to allow them to happen.
• Knowing where all your supplies are and making it easy to get to them will help you be more creative and intuitive in your art. You won;t have to break the flow to find that pastel or certain brush. 

Today's painting was done yesterday on Black paper with Terry Ludwig pastels.

Mini Pastel Demo ...Morning in the Desert

'Morning Glow'      8x10     pastel          ©Karen Margulis
purchase painting in my Etsy shop $145

It's great to be back at the easel with nothing on the agenda other than paint. Oh I have lots of other things to do but I set aside the day to just paint. I have so much I want to paint that it is hard to know where to begin.  So I decided to start at the beginning of the trip.....Albuquerque.  

Today's painting is from the Elena Gallegos Open Space in Albuquerque. We arrived a day ahead of the start of the IAPS convention and ran into Stan Sperlak. He was going to paint in the morning with Kim Lordier and some other artists and invited us to meet them. We went to the location a bit later and they had moved (the gates had been closed) I was sad to have missed painting with them but I did get some nice photos of this beautiful spot.

• I decided to do a warm underpainting with hard pastels that I rubbed in with a piece of pipe foam insulation. I call this a dry underpainting. I chose the warm colors to help me give an underlying glow to this early morning scene.
• I am using UArt paper 600 grit and Terry Ludwig pastels.

• I start by blocking in my darkest areas. I want to try to simplify this very busy scene. There are a lot of bushes and brushy stuff so I will be taking a lot of it our and massing as much of it as I can. After I mass in the darks I started to add lights to the sunny side of the bushes. The bush in the front is a dries chamisa so it will be lighter.

• Next I add the blues to the distant mountain. I leave some of the peach showing since some of the mountain is lit by the sun. These are the Sandia Mountains and are pink when lit by the sun.  Finding the right blues for these distant Southwest mountains has been my challenge. I haven't found the perfect stick yet and find I have to layer several to get the effect I want.

• Now I put in a few blues and pale yellows in the sky. I am using big bold strokes. I don't want it to be dirty looking so I try to put down my strokes and leave them alone.

• For the next step I put down the sand. I use a duller color for the distant sand and a brighter warmer peach for the close up sand.The underpainting color helps make the sand more complex. 

• Finally I add the details in the bushes and modify the shadows with some blue. 

After I finished this painting I used it to inspire a very abstracted version. This is something I have been wanting to do and I have been playing around with some ideas that I will share soon!

What Daily Road Trip Paintings Did for Me

'A Beautiful Journey'          8x10          pastel       ©Karen Margulis
purchase painting in my Etsy shop $145 HERE

 On the road for 24 days and 23 road trip paintings done. The trip was a great experience that was only enhanced by taking the time to do a daily painting.  I will be writing all about what made it easy and fun to do but today I wanted to share my thoughts on how doing these painting have helped inspire me.

This morning I took the time to photograph each painting. I put them on a large piece of  foam core so that I could see them all in the order that I painted them. I was interested in seeing how they changed from day one to day 23. I discovered that something happened mid way through the trip.  I began to get bolder and more colorful in my approach. Look at the first and last road trip paintings below.

'Distant Mountain Blues'    5x7   plein air pastel #1

'Sedona Wetlands Path'      5x7      plein air pastel #23

The painting at the top of the page was done today in the studio from one of my photos taken as we approached Albuquerque. We had stopped at a rest area and I painted my first road trip painting at the picnic shelter (see above)  I thought that it would be fun to paint my first studio painting after the trip from the same place as my first road trip painting.  I discovered that I saw the place with different eyes.

• After a month in the Southwest I was more relaxed.
• I saw more color
• I felt more confidence in painting what I saw
• I understood the landscape better. We were no longer strangers.
• I felt more freedom to interpret what I saw and interject my emotions into the scene.

I believe that painting this landscape everyday helped me understand it better. I was constantly looking and thinking about how I would paint it but actually doing it and choosing colors really helped to reinforce what I was thinking. Taking 20-30 minutes each day to paint helped me utilize all of my senses. By the end of the month I had totally immersed myself in this beautiful landscape and felt the freedom to paint it as I saw it.

Now that I am back in the studio I can't wait to see what else develops!

What You Should do After a Workshop or Trip

'Summer Storm Variation'        5x7       pastel      ©Karen Margulis

I arrived home last night after 24 days on the road. It was a fantastic trip! Thank you to all of you who followed along with us through the blog and facebook. It was a pleasure to share our adventure.  But now it is back to reality.  I am running around today catching up, cleaning house and doing errands. I haven't even had the chance to unpack and see my daily paintings and other treasures I found.

It is frustrating.  I want to forget about all of the chores and upload all my photos.  I want to paint some of the impressions I have of the Southwest.....while they are fresh.  I don't want life to get in the way and distract me. The trip was so inspiring that it would be a shame to have to plunge into daily life and leave it all as a sweet memory.

We talked about this dilemma on the trip.  Wouldn't it be nice to have a week or more after a workshop or an inspiring trip to do nothing but paint. Wouldn't it be great to have access to a quiet studio with absolutely no distractions or obligations....so that you could practice what you learned....or paint what you have been thinking about as you traveled?  It would be nice.....but not very realistic for most of us....So here is what I plan to do so that I can make the most of my trip:

• Use the travel time home to make a plan for your art. Write down painting ideas, things you want to try, supplies you need. Also write down all of the follow up and errands you need to get done. I find that if I get it all out of my head and down on paper I feel less cluttered.

• Spend the first day or two home and get all of the chores and errands out of the way. Don't be tempted to sit and go through your trip things or worse start going through photos. Use this as the reward for working hard and getting caught up with the household stuff.

• Get the house cleaned if you can afford it. I can't but as I cleaned house today I thought about how nice it would be to cross this chore off my list. But I know I will paint better if the house and studio are in order. 

• PHOTOS: if you come home from a trip with thousands of photos like I did be sure to have a plan for them. Download them and back them up.  For this trip I used a new memory card for each leg of the trip rather than one big memory card. This way I wont lose all of my photos should something happen to the card.  I will be creating a folder on my computer for each leg of the trip. I will eventually create photos for various subjects but I don't want to spend too much time organizing photos instead of painting. ( more on this later)

• Have a collection of photos printed to use for references. I plan to choose 100 photos to have printed to start with. I usually print my own photos but I have so many this time I just want to quickly go through them and choose the first 100 that jump out at me. (I have a coupon for 100 free photos at costco)

 I need to get back to my chores so I can get back into the studio tomorrow. I plan to blog more about my trip and review some of the things that helped make it great so stay tuned or feel free to ask any questions!

Today's painting was chosen for a BLICK's ad in the September Pastel Journal. It is one of my favorite paintings form my 100 variation series. I am excited that Blick's chose my painting for an ad!

Sedona Wetlands and Climbing Red Rocks

'Desert Oasis'. 5x7. Pastel

We have to say goodbye to Sedona and make our way back home to Georgia. But we made it a great day. Holly and I started the day by hiking t o the top of the Airport Vortex. Well she went to the top. I stopped a bit shy. I'll blame it on on my shoes but I am not a big fan of sheer cliffs an steep drop offs.

Next we went to a wonderful little spot in Sedona recommended by the lady in the bird store. It is called the Sedona Wetlands and is a series of ponds created from reclaimed waste water . It is still a work in progress but it is a beautiful spot of green and blue among all of the red rocks. I did three daily paintings based on the Sedona Wetlands.

'Wetland Trails'. 5x7. Pastel

'Summer Sunshine'. 5x7. Pastel

I admit that I didn't paint these on location. It was getting very hot and there was no shade. Instead I came back to the cottage and sat on the patio to paint. I looked at my camera display. It really isn't a bad way to simplify a painting because you sure can't see much detail on a camera display!

Here are some photos of the wetlands. I was happy to spot three Black Crowned Night Herons!

And lots of happy little sunflowers.

 

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Sedona By Day....Painting on the Deck with my New Terry Ludwigs

'Path to Bell Rock'. 5x7. Pastel

We have fallen into a rhythm in Sedona. I planned the trip with this in mind. Five days to relax and let the beauty of the trip sink in before going back to our routines. We rise early and take our coffee out onto the deck. This morning we had another visit from the quail family! We do a morning excursion and come back to cool off in the heat of the day.

'Morning in Sedona'. 5x7. Pastel

And then I paint. Today I painted three daily paintings. I would have painted all afternoon but the sun encroached upon my shade!

'A Promising Day'. 5x7. Pastel

I decided to take out some of the new pastels I bought at IAPS. They were tucked away in the car. I had put together a set of 30 Terry Ludwig pastels of colors that I thought might be useful for the Southwest. Oh did I have fun with them! I have his SW and Arid Landscape sets at home and they are wonderful too. I think I am now set when I get home to paint from my reference photos!

Painting on the patio with my road kit an new TL pastels

We end the day with a glass of wine as we watch the light change our view. We discuss how we would paint it. Then we'll walk the grounds looking for birds and other treasures before the official sunset. It's a great way to spend a day.

 

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Vortexes and Birds...another day in Sedona

'The Morning Visitor'. 5x7. Pastel

Today was for the birds. That's a good thing for us! we love the birds and so we were pleasantly surprised by the Gambel Quail family that show up while we had our morning coffee. First daddy quail came into view to check it out. We had out down some seed. Then he called for mommy and over she scooted with about 15 babies in tow.

Are they rocks or baby quail?

Close up of baby quail

We spent the morning visiting some of Sedona's birding hotspots. We loved the Page Springs fish hatchery. We saw some birds but I loved the landscape.....meadows, ponds, pathways,great trees! This place has it all and if it hadn't been so hot I would have loved to paint there.

We got back to the cottage to an amazing blue sky with the most interesting swirling clouds. Could they be the result of the famous Sedona vortexes? I decided to paint the clouds and I did portrait of Daddy Quail too. Later today we will go visit one of the vortexes. I'll keep you posted!

'Swirling Skies'. 5x7. Pastel

 

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Shades of Blue....Our Day in Sedona

'Mountain View'. 5x7. Pastel over watercolor

It was a long leisurely day of soaking it all in. We were up at dawn and had an early morning walk up on airport Mesa . The grounds of our hotel are beautifully landscaped and we had great photo opportunities. We spent the morning visiting Crescent Moon Park and doing some errands. Back at our cottage I decided to take out my watercolors.

For my daily painting I decided to focus on the blues of the distant mountains instead of the red rocks. I did a watercolor under painting first. The painting took on a life of it's own as I reset the pastel and added some shaved yellow flowers inspired by the gardens here at the hotel.

Here is a photo of our view to the left

The wonderful variations of blues in the cliffs and mountains

This evening we sat on the patio and watched the sunset while we ate our dinner. As the colors in the sky faded the twinkling light of Sedona began to come on in the valley below. We discussed how we would paint it....what colors to use, how to make the lights glow, where to put the harder edges. It was very satisfying to watch it all unfold and let it soak in. Tomorrow night we will paint it!

I'll be posting more photos from our day on facebook so check them out if you'd like to see our encounters with the birds and the bees!

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It's All About the Sunset....Grand Canyon to Sedona

'Making Friends'. 5x7. Pastel

I'm back on the grid after spending the night at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We had a cabin with a partial rim view but since it had no porch with a view we decided to stay only one night. Yes we have been spoiled with wonderful views. And in Sedona we will have another great view from our cottage on the rim at Sky Ranch Lodge. Tonight I painted the view from their sunset overlook. We met the nicest ladies and their daughters and we all enjoyed a beautiful sunset. I can get used to this!

Our Sedona View that I painted this evening

'Cabin on the Rim'. 5x7. Pastel

Above was yesterday's daily painting done from the steps of our cabin at the Grand Canyon Lodge. We did enjoy sitting on the patio of the lodge watching the colors in the canyon change as the sun set.

 

Sunset at the Grand Canyon Lodge

Sunset at the Sky Ranch Lodge in Sedona

Tomorrow we move into our rim cottage. Since we're day early we are in a regular room. But we will have a fun day exploring Sedona. Stay tuned!

 

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The Majesty of Zion....Deciding What to Paint

 

'Hillside Symphony'. 5x7. Pastel. Karen Margulis

There is no lack of painting inspiration in Zion National Park. The difficulty lies not in finding something to paint but in choosing from an overwhelming visual feast. Do I want to paint the grand view or the close up vignettes? If time allows it is nice to try both. And that is just what we did today.

'Entering Zion'. 5x7. Pastel

Today we had the luxury of time. I planned this trip last year. I chose the route and picked out the lodging ( of course with the approval of my travel mates) My goal was to spend at least 2 nights at each place with some 3 and 4 night stays sprinkled in. I knew Zion and the Desert Pearl Inn would be a good place to spend extra time, so today was a day to paint.

It was easy to find a place to paint this morning because the view from the coffee shop was everything I needed! Beautiful light and textures. We got our supplies and found a bench. I was in a very colorful mood....maybe because I could see the colors of my pastels! Here is the view....

 

I also painted this afternoon and used my new Sennelier portrait set which gave me a more subdued painting, I'll post them tomorrow. We head to the Grand Canyon North Rim tomorrow and I'm not sure about Internet so I will post as soon as I can!

 

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Cleaning Pastels While Traveling

'Summer Color'. 5x7. Pastel

After two weeks on the road it's time to get clean. Yesterday was laundry day and today it was tome to clean my pastels. I love my little travel kit. It has been so easy to take out and quickly paint. But being jostled around in a box for two weeks can lead to very dirty pastels. In fact I didn't even realize how dirty they were until I cleaned them today.

 

Here is a before shot. Dusty and dirty! I had forgotten to bring along a rag to keep them wiped and the paper towels are never handy so they were desperate for a cleaning. I found a perfect cleaning solution. We are staying right on the Virgin River just outside of Zion National park. I noticed yesterday that the riverside was a very fine soft pink sand. Perfect for pastel cleaning.

I filled a ziplock bag with the sand. Then I transferred the dirty pastels into my box lid. I added a few pastels at a time into the bag of sand, gently shook the bag.....a little like shake and bake. The pastel are then squeaky clean. I put them back in the box looking better than new!

 

It was very hot today ...in the 100's! So I wanted to find some shade for my daily painting. For a change from the cliffs nd rocks I decided to paint the gardens in front of our hotel. Tomorrow I will get up early to paint before it gets too hot! Zion is very beautiful though and I have taken many photos!

Just a reminder.....all daily paintings are available by auction on Daily Paintworks. The link is at the top of the page. Also I post more trip photos on Facebook so be sure to friend me to see more!

 

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Discovering a Desert Oasis...Zion National Park

'Inspired'. 5x7. Pastel

Ahhhh we arrived at our base for the next three days and it is truly a gem. We are in Springdale Utah at the entrance of Zion National Park. We are staying at the Desert Pearl Inn. Our room overlooks the red rocks of Zion and is right on the Virgin River. I am relaxing in an adirondack chair on the desk listening to the breeze blow through the cottonwood trees.

'On the Banks of the Virgin River'. 5x7. Pastel

This afternoon I painted our view while we did our laundry. After 14 days on the road it was laundry time!

Today was a day to regroup and we have three days to explore the park before heading to the Grand Canyon. I plan to get out the pastels and water colors I bought at IAPS and give them a try.

 

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