The Frankenstein Palette Table I designed

I like to design things that I need for my studio.  I think it is a waste of money to go out and buy something that you can make yourself.  Besides, when you create your tools for a direct purpose they are exactly how you need them to be.  I would rather use a tool that functions as I intended and need it, rather than buying something that almost meets my needs and has to be altered later and will never be what I really needed.

I call this Frankenstein furniture because I cannibalized older useless dead furniture, bringing it back to life.

I needed a larger painting table, and a larger palette surface to work on so I decided to Frankenstein a painting table together with some furniture I dug up.

The base is from a kitchen table I rescued from a street corner.
I adjusted it to the perfect height.

 

The top is two parts glued and wood screwed together for strength.

The palette is a 3-inch thick bar table top that I stripped and recoated with linseed oil rubbed into the wood with a rag.  A circular palette makes it easy for me to organize and mix my color selections.  I like to lay my colors out in a circle like the color wheel and this oak table top was perfect. Wood is the absolute best surface for an oil painting palette.

The wide top is 48 inches x  36 inches.  It is a piece of 3/4-inch thick oak plywood.  I shaped the corners with a round to just give it a bit of style.  I can lay my brushes and paint tubes out on this larger surface.

I then drilled holes the same size as the tops of mason jars into the wood with a circle maker.

Then I epoxied the lids into the holes, using 4 grooved braid nails on the inside of each top to add the their stability to compensate for the torque when turning the jars out.  You can see the braids from the underside of the table.

Canning jars are the best for oil painting.  The lids are two part, the rim that screws onto the jar, and a disk lid that fits between the two to seal it when you need to keep solvents or pigments fresh.  The canning jars I used are common and easily replaceable.  There are 6 jars (I found a box of them needing resurrection in my garage), each had its propose.

A little sanding, a splash of paint, and its a perfect painting table. I used it for a time, and then I passed it on to my buddy Philip while we shared a studio.  We both liked working on it.

In retrospect there is one thing I would have engineered differently.  The circular palette top- I would have liked it to spin so access to each oil color would be easier.

There you have it, my Frankenstein painting table.

Too bad this can't come to Maui with me...

...but I will be painting there.

My grandfather's drafting table

My grandfather Greg was an engineer, a problem solver for Honeywell.  In his spare time he did fine woodworking.  Pop built clocks, most of the furniture in his house, tools to do things he needed, and he designed it all.

This drafting table is one of his designs and it has been mine for the last 15 years.  

I use it for everything.

Its height is adjustable from 36 inches and it can extend to 60 inches tall.  Making it comfortable to work on sitting in a chair, a tall stool, or standing.  I do most of my work on it these days standing.

The bottom of the legs are held by peg braces so it is easy to disassemble.

The adjustments are made by simple bolts and fly nuts.

                

The top can rotate its angle almost 180% and adjust to be flipped completely for working on complicated and tight compositions.  

His brother Rodney passed on a few years ago and I got his drafting tools.  This drafting arm is perfect for design and basic drafting.  I used it mainly for laying out tricky compositional elements when I wanted forms to coincide with one another.

I love this drafting table...

...I will use it until I die.

Progress has been made on my new painting

I was able to get some serious work done this evening.  I started painting at 5:30 PM, and finished working around 3:30 AM.  Quite a productive night.  I expect my formal work on this piece to be complete by the end of March.  Albeit, there is a huge amount of work to do simply to establish the overall composition.

Minneapolis #? "Penitent Magdelene"

All of these new color-forms will have to be strengthened once they dry.

Here is my Subject-matter, an oil painting I have been observing for almost a year at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

"Penitent Magdelene"

Bartolome Esteban Mutillo    c. 1650-1665

Thanks for reading...

...More to come soon.

New Improvisations

I have completed 5 improvisations for the kickstarter rewards this week.  I should be able to keep up with the work load and complete the rest of the kickstarter rewards by the third or fourth week in december.  I will mail them all out as soon as the wok is dry.

Minneapolis 9 "Improvisation a"

12 x 24, oil on canvas

Minneapolis 10 "Improvisation b"

12 x 24, oil on canvas

Minneapolis 11 "Improvisation c"

12 x 24, oil on canvas

Minneapolis 12 "Improvisation d"

12 x 24, oil on canvas

Minneapolis 12 "Improvisation e"

12 x 24, oil on canvas

I better get back into the studio and off the computer if intend to finish my work.

Thanks for thumbing through my blog...

...More to come soon.

BitTorrent 12 "The Peloponnesian War"

I just finished another painting in the BitTorrent series.  It is my philosophical representation of the "Peloponnesian War" and how I see both sides of the massive conflict to be.  I have used a triadic harmony in opposite of what I normally work with in color.

I am currently working on my compositional ideas for a series of works on "The Peloponnesian War" that will focus on the individuals involved in the war.

BitTorent 12 "The Peloponnesian War" 

24 x 36, oil on linen

Wedding Rings

Athena and I picked up our wedding rings this month...

 We worked with a jewelry designer named Karin Jacobson, she owns Karin Jacobson design where all of her jewelry showcases a wide variety of style and type from necklaces to rings to bracelets and more.  It took me several months to chose a place to go for our wedding rings, and my choice was  perfect.  

Karin worked with us to design the rings, and it was fast, it was fun, and overall Karin gets our business in the future.  

This is the set, Athena's engagement ring, her wedding band, and mine.

Here are a few pics of Athena's engagement ring,.
It is a natural 1.04ct green diamond set in palladium.

Thanks for the fantastic wedding rings Karin, they are works of art...

...we love them.

The paint palette I designed

Continuing with my series of posts about my studio equipment...

Sometime in 2005, when I had decided to take on the study of my new ideas within compositional oil painting, I found that having a dedicated paint table as my all in one palette, brush cleaner, and tool holder was essential to doing what I wanted to.

My grandfather and I threw together a few designs, and finally we found this one (he was an engineer whose speciality was designing machines to solve problems for the creation of  products and meet needs of those working on the products, and he was good).  

To make this we cannibalized and combined several different pieces of furniture together.  I would like to call this type of furniture building "Frankenstein Furniture"

It is made from cut oak, a piece of my great grandmother's kitchen table, cvc pipe, canning jars, epoxy, braid nails, a piece of a lamp table, and some hardware from home depot.  Then some oil based brush-on paint (which changes from series of works to series of works but I'll talk about that later on) and some linseed oil rubbed into the top...and we have a good solid palette table for the oil painter.

It is a simple design, at the height that matches my easel chair.  I can reach it with ease while sitting in front of my easel.  As you can see here, it's not really that tall, standing at 24" tall.

It has a 3/4 inch-thick Oak top.  I keep my paint colors separated and organized just as the color wheel.  It allows me to mix my oil colors quickly and without mistakes, which leads us to the color of the table itself.  Right now the table is painted black.  I need my mind to be trained toward darks below lights and the kind of depth that cartoons or screen prints have, solid colors of varying grades of color to elude to depth and light source.  Before the repainting of black, the table was neon green because I was working with colors in complement to neon green.  I have had this table painted so many colors its surface is getting pretty thick, but its necessary for me to unconsciously work my oil color.  I believe that the color I surround myself with influences my work, just as the color of my palette table influences my work.

After a session of painting, I clean up the top some and put all my brushes used that day into one of the canning jars.

The canning jars are perfect for this because the top is open, and threaded for the glass.  I used epoxy to get the top rings in place.  Then I used 4 braid nails on the inside lip of each top to secure it further and avoid it from ever popping out of place from use.

The canning jars just twist up into the table and stay there firmly.  There are 6 jars, one for each basic color of the color wheel. (Blue, red, yellow, orange, violet, and green)  Each jar is evenly spaced from one another.

I can remove them and take them up to the house to clean my brushes in the sink.  That very simple feature makes it so I can clean my brushes with ease.  Let's be honest, we all hate cleaning brushes and having to transport them around is a pain and messy.  Really oil paint is like leprosy, once it's on one thing its on everything.  So this idea helped me keep my brushes clean.

I have some cvc pipes that I cut up to match my palette knives, scrapers, and other random tools that I use.  Sometimes, when I am working on something complicated and using an extra large amount of brushes at once, I'll use these for keeping my brushes separate from one another as I am working.  

A small hook for my tube roller.

From these picture you can see that there is paint all over the sides.  After a session of painting, when I have to clean my brushes off, I just start wiping them on stuff.  I just do that, I always have, and I'm not really sure why.  I guess its like marking your territory or something primitive, either way there is paint on everything...its kinda annoying.  

So to stop from ruining my things, I only wipe my brushes on my palette tables or painting chair, or painting couch. (yes, I have a painting couch and it rules.  Seriously ever painted in the comfort of a couch, you should, its like going to a spa with out the smug -opulence and art all in one.)

I wipe them off in a very specific pattern on my palette table, following the color wheel and matching the layout of color on the palette top.  I find it useful to always be surrounded by the color wheel in as many different ways as possible.

When I have finished a set of paintings, normally three works, I will sand the top off, then repaint the rest of it to whatever color I am trying to put into my subconscious to work with.  

Currently I am working on another palette table for Phillip Hoffman.  He has very special needs as an oil painter just as I do, so we designed a palette table for his needs.  I will put up a post about that when we are finished with it.

Studio #8 - Pleasant Avenue South

Since 1997, I have always lived in my studio.  Now that I live with my fiancé Athena, I can't live in the toxic chemical environment of an art studio.

So I converted our garage into my new Art studio!!!

My 8th studio in Minneapolis is a garage, yep people, my wife-to-be needs something better than living in a studio, so we are renting a house (the roommates downstairs suck).  It was pretty cool the two of us, our two dogs, and one cat all living in a working art studio that was only 800 or so square feet.  

here are some of my old studios over the years...

...you have seen all of these in my past posts on my studios.

This is my new studio...

...right to left panorama.

Nikita & Caravaggio hanging out in the studio.

I have already been fairly productive here, except for the time I needed to recover from the accident.  I finished the final touches to the studio a few weeks ago.  Funny as it is, I will be moving on in three months to a new larger house with a larger and better studio.

Thanks for reading...