- My Hughes 4000 easel. I love this easel! It moves up and down and side to side very easily with the counter balanced carriage. My painting flow can continue because I don’t need to stop and adjust the easel. My ceiling is 8 feet. To accommodate, I purchased an extra set of canvas clips so I can move the painting higher on the mast without moving the mast up. Necessary for a lower ceiling if you like to stand to paint like I do.
- Photo double clip. You can find this clip at B&H photo for around $10. It’s worth so much more. This is the tool students ask about in every one of my workshops. I clip it to the right side of my easel and insert a photo in the clip on the other side. I often use both a printed photo and my MacBook screen because color looks different. It’s nice to have options. I will also use it to clip value studies and color studies.
- Quiller Color Wheel. Lately I’ve been experimenting with limited palette color schemes in my painting such as triadic and tetradic colors. I use a traditional color wheel, but it’s also been really handy to have the Quiller Color Wheel, which shows where tube colors land on the color wheel. This has been a really fun way to play with color.
- Art books. I have a bit of an art book obsession. There are always a few books from my collection sitting in my studio. Sometimes they are impressionists, sometimes tonalists, sometimes Hudson River School. It’s inspiring to see how artists from the past handled the landscape. The stack you see in this photo is only a small portion of my collection. I have a bookshelf that covers three-quarters of a wall in another room.
- Vertical files. Several years ago I had a system of vertical files custom made for my studio. They are in sections of 4 feet in length which was a good idea, as they’ve been moved several times. There are three sets of the lower vertical files at counter height, which I use as a horizontal surface, and one set of tall vertical files which double as a computer stand at the perfect height for screen viewing. I can store everything from plein air paintings to large studio paintings and boards in these files.