Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Studio Update - Painting the Wall

Jamie and I spent the weekend cleaning up and painting the wall of my studio. I should take a good picture of the line where we stopped cleaning the wall... you can see an edge in these photos where my neighbor to the left cleaned up higher than we were able to reach. That might give you an idea of how dirty it was! Slowly but surely all of us at the Pressroom Studios have been cleaning, painting, and improving the space. It takes time, though, especially with the floors since the dirt and dust continues to settle back down.

Anyhow, we painted the wall a dark gray-green. It really looks quite a bit darker in real life, until you get close to it. The color is inspired by what has been referred to by some artists as "Whitaker Green," after the artist William Whitaker and the color of his studio walls. The color is a perfect background for skin tones, being complementary to their hue and quite desaturated, which makes even pale skin like mine glow in front of it.

Here's the before picture of what the wall looked like before we painted. Jamie has also primed my sides of the pillars at the front of my space, and we will paint those areas to match.

Next on the list, I am going to create a 3 panel movable wall and paint it the same color as the studio wall. Then, I will be able to control more of that light that is bouncing all over the place and also block nude models from view. I also need to get some curtains up, and we are considering painting the floor in order to lessen the amount of light that bounces off the floor and onto the model. Now that the sun is getting lower in the sky, and these are south-facing windows, direct beams of sun and light reflecting from below are becoming big problems, which is why I have temporarily moved my set-up to the corner.

1 comment:

sara said...

It looks like the painting is coming along very nicely. It is a joy to see the progress of your paintings.

I have not seen your studio before, but it appears to have a lot of light and ample room for projects, I am sure you will make it even better as time goes by.

Have you ever considered painting more neo-classical themes in the future? I have mentioned "Lilith" to you in the past, maybe some other mythos subjects would be nice as well. I do like your "point of view" on the subjects you have thus portrayed.

Again, it is always nice to visit your blog. Best wishes.