I’ve spent most of this week painting, packing, and moving into my new studio. With the recent birth of our second child my wife and I decided it would be best to swap a couple of rooms in our house. My old studio is now our master bedroom and our old bedroom is now my studio.
I’m still tidying up and reorganizing a bit, but here’s some photos of what I’ve done so far. (This is also probably the cleanest it will ever look):
Here’s where all the magic happens. I bought a Cintiq over a year ago and have been working all-digital ever since. I haven’t used my drawing table in over a year so it’s stored away in the garage.
Having a Cintiq with a second monitor is a really nice setup. When researching a project I can grab reference images from the internet and spread them all over the top monitor and do all my drawing/painting on the Cintiq. In Photoshop I can also have my illustration open twice with two windows (Window > Arrange > New window…). On the Cintiq I’ll zoom in and do detail work while the window on the upper monitor stays zoomed out. Simply by glancing up I can see how the detailed work looks in context with the larger image.
To the left of my desk is my “library corner” and next to it a treadmill. Everyone tells me the recliner looks like a “granny chair”, and they’re right. It used to belong to my Grandma, and it’s super comfortable so I keep it around.
Both the chair and the treadmill are pointed towards my computer monitor in the corner so that I can watch DVD’s and even TV shows. A while back I bought an EyeTV unit which turns my computer into a DVR. Nice!
Here’s another view of the treadmill. I used to be a runner and in my mid-twenties I regularly ran seven miles at a time. Oh how the mighty have fallen! Over the years I’ve put on a lot of weight and degraded into a marshmallow schlump. Its high time I started losing the weight. I try to walk/run for at least twenty minutes every day (except Sunday) and for the most part I stick to it. It’s also a nice way to take a quick break and re-energize during a midnight stretch on a tight deadline. There’s also a couple of barbells on the floor that I’m getting back into using (baby steps). My job is very sedentary so any exercise I can get is a good thing.
The Batman standee was a gag gift given to me by some friends when I moved to the Minneapolis area back in 2003. He stares down on me to make sure I meet my deadlines.
That’s the nickel tour. If anyone’s interested here’s what my old studio looked like, and here’s some links to the studios of a few other freelancers.