New Website

 I recently changed up my art website and moved everything onto a new service. I’m hoping this will be easier for me to keep updated with new art, take less time to post, and provide me with more time to paint. Wish me luck :)

A New Studio Space

 I thought I would share a photo of the studio in our new home.

The space is divided into three zones: the active studio, the library, and the computer area. This is not a huge room, but it does allow for some separation for the different work tasks.

New Studio

The picture ledges are aluminum trays made to hold chalk or markers.  They are light in weight but super strong, and they are easily attached to the walls using screws into the studs behind the wall board.  The trays do NOT come with any holes in them for mounting, but a 3/8" drill with a steel bit easily drills through the aluminum.  This way you (or your handy person) can locate the screw holes where the studs are in the wall.  I purchased the aluminum trays online from http://mywhiteboards.com/almatr.html

I wanted to have picture ledges that were continuous along the wall, and I also wanted them to be simple and sort of blend into the background so that the art sitting on the ledge could be the focus of attention.  Any wooden picture ledges I found or thought about making would have been much heavier, requiring stronger attachments, than these aluminum trays needed.  I'm very pleased with how they turned out.

A rolling tool chest houses the majority of my painting stuff - brushes, paints, etc.  I shamelessly borrowed this idea from Carol Marine who is one of my favorite contemporary artists.

An inexpensive rolling "trolley" from a beauty supply chain holds my palette and can be easily moved around the room.  A clamp-on lamp is attached to a tripod stand and provides plenty of light for artwork. The easel is made up of a camera tripod and the Guerrilla No. 17 Flex Easel. A panel holder is set in the Flex Easel to hold the small boards I use.

New Colors II: Violet PV-19

Time for an update on the Caesar Purple/PV-19 confusion.

If you remember the color chart I made from all of my oil paints with the color index name of PV-19, Caesar Purple was much bluer than the others.

I did a bit more reading and discovered that there are two versions of PV-19:  a red and a violet.  So, I ordered some other brands of the violet PV-19.  Here is the color chart that includes Caesar Purple and the other new violets that arrived last week:

Color Chart for Violet PV-19 - Oil
Various Manufacturers

And here is the previous mostly red PV-19 Color Chart

Color Chart for (mostly) Red PV-19 - Oil
Various Manufacturers

You can see that color-wise, the violet PV-19 is pretty much the same for all of the manufacturers that I sampled.  The same goes for the red PV-19.

However, each manufacturer has its own formula for creating tube colors with different working characteristics, and, of course, each manufacturer has its own purchase price.  Here is a break down of the prices for the violet PV-19 tubes I recently purchased, most of them on sale:
                                             Purchase Price    Size of Tube (mL)      Price/mL
Schmincke-Mussini                   $ 15.57                     35                    $  0.44  
M. Graham Co.                             9.59                      37                        0.25
Rembrandt                                   13.35                    40                        0.33
Gamblin                                         9.57                    37                       0.29
Blick                                            22.25                    40                       0.56

The point of this exercise is to demonstrate that manufacturers who use the color index classification system are making paint that is consistent in color at vastly different prices.  So why buy the most expensive brand when the least expensive will do the trick?  You may prefer the working characteristics of the costlier paint, and that may make it worthwhile to you.

As for me, I now have plenty of violet PV-19 on hand, so I think I am set for the rest of my life a while.  I will eventually do this exercise for other paints in my collection, but it's time for me to get back to the easel!