My Studio & Workspace

(C) 2014 Dale DiMauro

This is me in my workspace - a room in the front of our south-facing house. I realize most artists prefer the northern light which is even, not too bright and casts the least number of shadows. However, in our house the windows are small and high on the north wall. In the winter at times, I also work in the kitchen on our kitchen table.

I like to use 140 lb Arches watercolor blocks for smaller paintings because they are portable and usually won't buckle. These blocks are glued on all four sides with an opening in the middle of the back to slide a palette knife to separate the current sheet from the others.  For larger paintings I use 300 lb Arches or Saunders Waterford sheets of watercolor paper.

I prefer watercolor paint out of a tube, even though it comes in a pan format. I use Winsor Newton and Daniel Smith paints for their quality and reliability. I have a variety of brushes but primarily use six and they all are kolinsky sables which can be pricey. I particularly like the kolinsky sable rigger brush(size 6) which enables me to paint fine line work such as the rigging on boats. I use 'round' paintbrushes for most of my watercolors and a 1" flat for the early stages particularly in establishing the sky. I store any finished but unframed watercolors in a set of flat files I have in my office. These enable the paper to lay flat but out of the direct sun. The watercolor blocks available have a nice rugged cover sheet which folds over the paper to protect it until further use.

I will discuss other matters such as which palette to select and how to arrange your paint or at least what I do in upcoming blog posts.