Workspace tricks and tools

Every single year, someone on the NaMoPaiMo Facebook page starts a "show me your workspace!" post. It's a wonderful tradition, and I always enjoy seeing everyone's glorious messes.

Beyond that, I like to see how people have things organized, and what tools they have that I might need.

photo by Teri Chandani

Mistaking the paint water cup for the drinking cup is a time honored artist issue. Her's how Jenn Constantine solves that problem: See that mug? It has important features for the likely distracted artist, such as a lid to keep those pesky paintbrushes out, and that lid is a very tight seal with an actual locking flip on it. Also handy for when you knock it over. Yes, when, not if.

This particular one is a Brümate, and it's become my daily driver so to speak in both of my job spaces. You do not want to have to clean coffee or tea out of a piano! I highly recommend it and similar styles. Also pretty glitter colors with a smooth surface for stickers. The gasket on the lid also comes off easily for cleaning and easy to put back on.

On the other end of the problem is the paint cup. "Okay Jenn, how do I stop myself from drinking out of the paint water?" Get a Paint Puck. It's a little expensive, but easy to disassemble and can take a beating in cleaning since it's silicone. Also has the frilly holder edge as a handy no-mouth warning system. If you still manage to drink out of it past that, I can't help you 

Of course, drinks and paint water aren't the only things that can get mixed up. Stephanie Blaylock uses water bottle caps for my clear acrylic eye glaze. This prevents her from confusing it with the blending gel on her palette.

Levi Kroll uses bottle caps for glue and rubbing alcohol and plastic tops from oatmeal containers as paint pallets. He says: We go through so much oatmeal here!

Continuing in the recycling vein, here's Sondra Householder's workspace. She writes: Things I need! A turntable, two level so the horse is high enough to see, and I can cram the lower level with crap. And this rectangular thingie with toilet paper rolls in it to hold the brushes I’m using. They can be organized by color or size/shape.

Hanna Wikborg's most used free or cheap everyday items include glass jars for paint water, takeout food sauce cups for mixing airbrush colors, toothpicks and cotton swabs for cleaning and detailing when painting, an old plastic mushroom container from mushrooms for soaking all the dirty parts of her airbrush and the trusty old paper towels. What would we do without them? she asks.

Quin-Levi Kinder-Chase writes: My favorite ever art life hack has to be using those silicone pop it fidget toys as a palette! Paint just pops off them and a little soapy warm water cleans it up super quickly.

Christine Lewis' workspace includes repurposed cabinets and spice racks to hold her paint. Efficient and attractive!

Summer Poupore uses an old make-up carousel for storing paintbrushes and painting supplies.

Moving from recycled and repurposed to things that are worth spending money on, Hannah Clark writes: My favorite efficiency trick is that my work desk has a magnetic backing, so I have little magnets to keep my pliers and scissors for tack making, and more importantly for this month, I glue magnets to the backs of my pan pastels. It keeps them in easy reach and I don’t have to sort through a pile of things. There’s a sort of top shelf of the desk but I can’t reach it while sitting so I got a little under shelf drawer for my paints to keep them in close enough reach and easy view but not scattered across my desktop.

Have you ever struggled to open an old, crusty tube of paint? There's a tool for that! Elaine Lindelef explains: This is a strap wrench. You might also see it sold as a jar opener. It works to open any bottle or tube, any size, and will not damage the lid.

Here's something for the pastel artists. Beatrice Rudolph writes: Although I’m not completing my NaMo pony in pastels this year, I wanted to share one of my favorite tools for those who are. This is a keyboard duster thing, essentially it blows air, similar to canned air, but battery powered.

I know a lot of pastel artists will blow on their horses to get off excess dust. Of course, then you aren’t wearing a dust mask and you’ll breathe in the pastels. You can also get spit on your model… I’ve definitely done this.

Other artists will brush the excess pastel dust off with a make-up brush - this hasn’t personally worked for me, it still is too thick in places.

Anyway, especially when I was staying with pastels, they would be grainy because i sealed too much pastel onto the horse. This is a way to not lay on too much pastel dust, just blow the excess off with this handy tool, while wearing your dust mask, of course!

Finally, every model horse workspace needs its own model horse! Sharon Killcoyne explains: Wanted to share a little tip that has helped me a great deal. Meet my buddy. He sits on my painting table year round. He will never be fully customized. His job is to be my tester. When I am trying a new technique, new color or what have you, often try it out on him first to see if I like it and if it will work, before potentially messing up my good model.Periodically he gets another quick coat of primer to cover up all his spots. He has just been primered again. After this, though, he will need to stripped and start over. That primer is getting pretty thick!

Thanks, everyone. This is awesome. I definitely have some shopping - and recycling! - to do.