ORGANIZING YOUR ART STUDIO

I like to organize my art studio at the beginning of the new year to make my space an inviting, inspiring place where I feel creative.

And I NEED to organize my art studio at that point. After finishing my holiday collection, I always have a mess. Painting a lot of small works and marketing them for the holidays takes a lot of energy. After each piece in the holiday collection is shipped, I like to close the door and spend the time between Christmas and New Year’s with my family. So, I actually enjoy the first week of January when I clean and organize my art studio. I don’t always do it, but I recommend organizing your art studio at least once a month to keep your creative space a haven and somewhere you want to be. So, where to start?

Clean and purge.

Give yourself permission to simplify and eliminate what you don’t use. Keep only what you love using, and avoid hanging on to products because you spent a lot of money on them. Donate them to an artist friend or an aspiring artist if you don’t want to throw them away. There is something therapeutic about cleaning and organizing. And even getting rid of things.

A clean space and an organized art studio are also great for creativity.

I started with paint. I’ve been working on minimalizing my palette and my supplies. Artists tend to collect art supplies, and going to the art supply store is like a kid in a candy store. But we don’t need every color that is available, and mixed color is always better than straight out of the tube anyway. I pulled out all of my half-used tubes of acrylics, colors I thought I needed but didn’t use, and almost empty tubes. I mixed them in with other colors, used them as underpaintings, and used some to create grays. That got rid of lots of paint and got me started on some new paintings too.

Brushes. I’m bad about not cleaning my brushes very well. I get in a hurry when it’s time to clean up, and I often return to hardened brushes that still have paint in them. Oops. I used brush solvent and restored what I could. Then I sorted my brushes and threw out anything with hardened or worn-out bristles. However, some of them make pretty cool marks with the rough edges. Those I kept. I store my brushes upright in my grandmother’s jadeite coffee cups. It keeps them sorted by size and shape, and I love the reminder of those childhood days sitting in her kitchen.

Categorize and store art supplies for how you use them in your art studio.

I like to be able to see what I use and not get distracted by what I don’t. What works for me is organizing my art studio so that it relates to how I work. I store my paints in rolling carts and sort them by temperature. My neutrals are on one shelf, the cools on another, and the warms are together—that way, I can reach for exactly what I need. I use open wooden shelves to organize my big containers of gesso, mediums, and large paint bottles. My mark-making materials are all on these shelves too.

• Canvas. I sorted them by size and used those big organizing tubs to store them. I also unwrapped each canvas and gessoed them to make it easier to start painting. Sometimes I even wire them before I paint on them. I store my canvases in my office to keep my art studio clutter-free and organized. You could also keep them in a spare closet.
• Pencils, pastels, artist crayons, and oil sticks. My studio is stocked with them all, along with colored pencils, markers, charcoal, and probably a few other mediums. I organized them in clear boxes in my art studio by color, sharpened them, and donated duplicates I no longer use. I use clear boxes for each type of tool.
• Extra paint mediums. I also own gouache, oil paint, and watercolors. Occasionally I like to paint with gouache but don’t use watercolors or oils anymore. I learned to paint in oils, so I’ve been reluctant to get rid of them, just in case I wanted to go back to oil painting. I finally decided I wouldn’t use them, so in an effort to simplify and keep my art studio organized; I threw away the tubes that had gone bad and gave the others to an artist friend. The watercolors only take up a little space, so I kept those. All these items I don’t use regularly are stored in a closet with closed doors.
• Reference photos and books. I have a collection of art books I love looking through for inspiration. I also tear out pages of magazines of color schemes or compositions I like. And I take a lot of photos to use for reference. I keep them in my art studio and organize them in file folders by subject matter. I also have a file for color reference and one for compositions and other ideas. I’ve collected and taken reference photos since I started painting 15 years ago, so I could probably spend a whole week just purging those.

Declutter the rest of the space.

The fewer ‘things’ in the room where I paint, the freer my brain is to focus on my work. I used to have momentos and family photos in my art studio, but to keep it simple and organized, they are now relegated to my office space. Same for my computer. I cleared my drawing table of all the stacks of ideas, sketches, and supplies that had begun to creep into the area where I work flat.
When I was finished, I felt productive, more creative, and ready to return to work in my clean and organized space! How do you organize your studio?

Want to see more tips on running your art business? Or see the art that I’m making in my clean studio?