Marketplace: Rearranging the Studio

January 24, 2020January 24, 2020 Bernadette

black cats looking out window — Mimi and Jelly Bean sit by the window.

A few years ago I had to quit working on an easel for my bigger paintings, even though I’d worked at an easel for over 20 years prior. Suddenly I was having headaches and backaches and found it easier to have larger paintings lying flat on my drafting table while I stood and looked down at them.

That’s the way I started Amy’s portrait, but suddenly that no longer worked for me. I’ve been slowly rearranging my studio over the past few months, moving activities to the basement that fit much better there and giving me two work spaces so I can do more in a day, and more than one project at the same time. It’s what I need to do to keep up with earning a living making things and doing art.

I’d been thinking about how to fit my easel back into the studio. I had invested in a solid easel that could accommodate many sizes of paintings in different media, but it still had a fairly small footprint in the room. Over the next few days I had the rearrange of the corner in my mind, and I put it into action last weekend, one of the reasons I didn’t post much last weekend, beginning Friday night. Moving furniture upstairs is like working with a Rubik’s cube or Tetris, but I finally determined the file cabinet had to leave the room and all was good by Saturday night. On Sunday morning I brought my easel in from the deck, cleaned it up, set it in the corner, and all the cats came in to explore.

Above is what the corner looks like now, and I’m really pleased! Mimi and Jelly Bean came to look out the window as they like to do, just from a different angle. However, this is what my worktable looks like now. I have a lot of things to sort out and put away.

piled stuff on worktable — Meanwhile, my worktable.

Then I spent Sunday night and Monday catching up on work and blogging on my computer, and woke up Tuesday morning with one of my classic horrible eye strain headaches, the one that feels like mild vertigo with a band around my head, and makes me want to puke. I knew it was caused by the way I had arranged my computer. The monitor had needed to be lower for the focals in my lenses, and the move did lower it but not enough, and I was too close to the monitor too. My eyes have always been very sensitive, and I was always the carsick kid and sometimes still am, sometimes having to sit still and look straight ahead to avoid motion sickness when I’m a passenger. I also had the mouse in the wrong place, which pulled on a muscle across my shoulders that had been pulled before by the same action, and that combined with all the tension from my eye strain, and really I just wanted to lie down and try to sleep it off.

I was so impatient to get back to Amy’s portrait, and I had a list of projects scheduled for this week for which I’d assembled all the materials and was more than ready to see them become reality. I had to move and adjust the computer monitor, avoid using either one as much as possible, and do my best to reduce the swelling in my optic nerves and anything else connected using ice and acetaminophen, and even some Dramamine. I wasn’t feeling well enough to keep up a full schedule until Thursday afternoon which accounts for the lack of posts this week. Even by Friday morning I still felt some tension in my forehead, neck and back, but I resumed using the computer. It’s now Friday evening and I’m feeling pretty good, and ready to get to all those projects!

two black cats on chair — Stole my chair in about 10 seconds.

Everyone is resuming their regular habits in here, as the two above took my chair, and Hamlet found his way to the water bowl on the windowsill for a little sip.

black cat drinking from bowl — Hamlet stops in for a drink.

So I don’t have the exciting new product ready for my Marketplace post this week (and my post is a day late too!), but I did get my worktable halfway cleared and reorganized it. This weekend I’m attending the 2020 Online Cat Conference and I have projects to work on all weekend while I listen to and watch the presentations. Just you wait until the coming weeks!

And you’ll continue seeing photos of the felines in the “old” studio as I find ones I didn’t use before now.

Marketplace

fourblack cats on worktable — How do I get anything done?

How do I get anything done?

Take a look at other new merchandise and featured artwork.

Marketplace is a feature on The Creative Cat to share the latest coming out of my studio with my readers. Once a week on Thursday I feature something new in my “shop” .

Read about creating custom items

Find out more about creating custom items for your own home using the images you see here. Visit the “Ordering Custom Art” page to see samples and read bout how to order.

Find out about events and festivals where you can find me and my work.

Sign up for my e-newsletter (below), check the widget on the sidebar on my home page, or sign up to receive posts on Portraits of Animals Marketplace. I plan on plenty of events this coming summer in the Pittsburgh area.

It’s all done under the close and careful supervision of my studio cats!

Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.