HOME ART STUDIO IDEAS

I've been thinking about home workspaces lately and I'm wondering if kindergarten classrooms could serve as a template. That's because I remember how inspiring my kids schoolrooms used to be. All those clever mobiles and hamster cages and colorful bulletin boards...they were beautiful! I even liked the low tables...well, sort of. Seeing them made me want to nudge the kids aside and draw.

Here's a few of the ideas I've seen on the net so far. Most of them are from Reggio Emilia which is an Italian preschool of the Montessori/Waldorf sort. I have no idea if the theory behind Emilia has any merit...I just like the way some of their classrooms look.

I like their custom-made furniture. What do you think of the multiple easels combined with the long paint rack (above)? It's not a bad idea if you have more than one project going at a time.

I like some of their shelves (above), too. Also the idea of dividing the room into different work areas.

'Nice curved shelves! And I like the hanging branch and dangling...I dunno...stuff! The rest of this room (above) could be better, though.

A hanging swathe of blue cloth. Interesting!

Wow! A nice door surround!

Here's (above) an interesting supply shelf/room divider.

 Ni-i-i-i-ice!!!! It's a small bed sheet-type diorama/room light. It need only stand out from the wall a few inches, and it could be as small as 3' X 4'. Anything that would look good in silhouette could go behind it.

Here's an interesting idea for a basement studio. The rafters above are simply the exposed  floor boards supporting the room above. Only the trees and cheap old railroad ties are added. Pillars like these might be great places to display artwork in progress.

Nifty, eh?

BTW: what about my previous attraction to Julius Schulman's studio design (above)? The answer is that I like it as much I ever did. When the time comes to build my own workplace I'll commit to whatever scheme seems to fit the space I have to work with.

ROLLERCOASTERS

I had an absolutely wonderful New Year's holiday with my family but they refuse to let me write about them here so I'll have to talk about something else...like my trip to Magic Mountain with Mike. Boy, the park was crowded! I'm in the picture above...can you see me? I'm the one with the pimple behind my ear.

'Just kidding. I got this picture off the net.

I didn't get many photos. I was too distracted by all the girls wearing yoga pants. This girl (above) stood out by wearing a one piece, skin tight, yoga body suit...or so I thought. The camera picked up what my eyes couldn't...that it was actually a two piece outfit. Oh, well. 

I'm grateful to Mike for gallantly shielding the girl from my intrusive camera. By doing so he inadvertently gave us an opportunity to study his nails which I'm happy to report are spotlessly clean but are curiously pointed on the top edges.

Anyway, if you live in LA you know that Magic Mountain is primarily a roller coaster park. The roller coaster biz is highly competitive and MM does everything it can do to provide the most terrifying, grueling, gut wrenching rides possible.

You have to wonder where this competition is going to end. How steep will the slides get  before they're deemed too steep?

Yikes!

I guess the only limit is how much G-force the human body can take.

We must be inching up to that limit now.

Or maybe not.

The amazing thing is that we become blase to speed after a while. You get used to it.

The same ride that had us screaming for mercy the first time invariably seems tame a few rides later. 

Maybe that's why coaster designers are always chasing bigger and better thrills.

I can't imagine what kind of coasters my kids will see.

The real game changer will come when computers can guarantee that fast moving vehicles won't crash or hit anyone and noisy vehicles will operate at a tolerable decibel level. When problems like that are overcome then expect to see roller coasters and even airplanes planes operate in the city. Expect to see low-flying gondolas and jets race through city streets and sidewalks, sometimes a few feet off the ground.

On a slightly different topic: my own belief is that 50 years from now about 1% of the population will live for months at a time in rented mobile houses strung together like trains. Live-in cruise ships built for that purpose are on the drawing boards right now.

One day your house/train might be slowly threading through exotic urban centers (above)...

...and another day it might be winding around Rocky Mountain trails.

Interesting, eh?

BEDROOM DESIGN

Here's (above) a bedroom from Frank Lloyd Wright's Heart Island House. What do you think of it? For me it's too formal, too much like a terrific living room that just happens to have a bed in it. It lacks..."bedroomness." Wright was a peerless designer of living rooms but his imagination failed him when it came to bedrooms and kitchens.

 Ditto for Cliff May, another of my favorite architects. Bedrooms seem to have bored him. This one (above) looks like he devoted no thought to it at all.

For good bedroom ideas I find myself turning to less well-known designers. What do you think of this dark, low ceiling bedroom (above)? It's cozy and fun...evocative, too. It's like a Goldrush cabin in the Klondike or the Captain's quarters of an old 19th Century sailing ship.

I like to imagine that this room is one or two steps down from the level of the rest of the house, and that prompts an interesting question: is it a good idea to graft a cool historical bedroom onto a stylistically modern house? I'd say yes, but lots of people would disagree.

I like this (above) well-lit Ikea bedroom. I don't like what looks like a plain particle board cupboard on the extreme left, but the general layout seems fine. You can't see it from this angle but the headboard of the bed is a bookshelf on the side that faces the window. There's room to walk back there.

Here's a modest but still cozy bedroom idea, also from Ikea. It's cheery and even pleasingly austere, as if a nun sleeps there. Once again the lighting makes a big difference.

SMALL LIVING SPACES

Here's some Theory Corner thoughts about the furnishing of small, artist-friendly homes. I'll start with this (above) open plan living room and kitchen. I love this layout! It's simultaneously old-fashioned and modern; cozy and stimulating.

Here's (above) an interesting idea for a small bedroom, also cozy. The unusually low ceiling is covered by a rug, but I prefer to think of it as the kind of thick cottage cheese pattern that skilled plasterers make. The floor echos the ceiling with a heavily textured rug. The wall at the head of the bed is irregular old bricks painted white and it's all set off by a wonderfully wrinkled down quilt. The overall effect is that of cozy, textured shelter for the sleeper in the middle.

BTW, the low ceiling no doubt makes a great heat trap in the winter.

Canopy covered beds are also useful in cold climates. One user I read about bragged that he got more warmth from being enclosed in the canopy than he did from his blankets.

I hate to criticize the wonderful artist who painted this (Carl Larsson) but his bed contains too many broad, flat surfaces. That's okay. Other designs are out there.

 Most interior doors should be French style. The door here isn't like that but I include it anyway because it's easy to imagine how nice a paned door would have looked in a corridor like this one.

 Above, a variation on the French door.

 Here's a nice kids room. Unfortunately, factory-stained furniture is out of fashion now. You'd have to buy nude furniture and stain it yourself.

 Ahhh...that Craftsman look.

Last but not least, here's (above) a small balcony that works great. I like the ironwork and the idea that you can sit on the shelf that supports the plants. You could argue that an overhead awning would make it better, but that would hide the tree.

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2015!!!!!!!!

 Okay, one more Christmas gift idea and that's it! How about framed pictures which convey an Indiana Jones sensibility? My own taste would be for pictures of early explorers.

 How about this one of Admiral Peary, the North Pole explorer?

 Or this one of Amundsen at the South Pole?

 Here's Shackleton's ill-fated ship, the Endurance.

Or how about pictures taken by the early African explorers like Kingsley?

Kingsley was a woman. I don't know much about her. 

Who was she? There's a story in this somewhere.

How about some African fabric to set off the African pictures? 

Okay, it's Christmas Eve and I'm anxious to return to the family. I'll end with an early Christmas card showing me showing...I dunno...Christmas cheer. Merry Christmas to you and yours!!!!!!!!

A CHRISTMAS PRESENT SUGGESTION

This suggestion comes from Steve Worth, the esteemed web master of Animation Resources (link on the sidebar). He recommends the "T-fal OptiGrill," a device obtainable on the net that thaws and cooks meat quickly and automatically. 

The cook need only enter the type of meat by tapping a picture icon, and set a dial for rare, medium rare, medium, etc. Sensors inside the machine do the rest. Meat without bone seems to cook the best. 

The grill and fat collector come off and clean easily...it's like a George Forman grill in that respect. 

The grill-cooked pork chop I ate was tender and juicy and cooked just right. Geez, the future is here!

FAVORITE CHRISTMAS SONGS

Here's a few of the Christmas carols we're playing at my house this year. They've been on my playlist ever since I started this blog 9 years ago and I never get tired of them.



BTW: I just saw the Star Wars movie with a delightfully nerdy audience. 'Lots of fun!













Merry Christmas everybody!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AN UNUSUAL CHRISTMAS GIFT

Most animation cartoonists who come to Theory Corner probably aren't interested in fashion illustration, I guess because animation is acting intensive and requires an emphasis on simpler color. That's understandable, but I'd argue that a study of that medium, fashion I mean, is still useful for our trade, regardless of whether what we do ends up being on the screen or not. It's simply a good training ground for a certain kind of color and line. Of course I'm a guy so I'd choose more masculine subject matter.

It's a style that encourages doodling in color, as in these Christian Lacroix sketches.

Lacroix was one of the creators of the Cindi Lauper style in the 80s. 

His sketches are reproduced in a few books.  They'd make great Christmas gifts for artists. 

Here's (above) a page from a Lacroix swatch book. I like the color combinations.

Swatch books never turn up in book stores. They're handed down from one artist to another.

I did a search for Lacroix posters but I didn't turn up anything first rate. To judge from pictures on the net, the posters he puts on his own walls are colorful prints from other media. 

That's all I have to say about Lacroix, but I'll add that my hits have diminished in the last couple of weeks, maybe because people are focused on the holiday. That's okay, so am I. I think I'll take this opportunity to post on a reduced schedule for a couple of weeks. I'll be back on a full schedule soon after Christmas. 

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