Galway Art school teach art classes in Galway suitable for beginners and improvers. In this section of our website we want to lend our students a hand setting up your art studio at home- all the art materials you need and everything you need to know for your first art projects. Part 1

Your home art studio- How to solve the problem of cleanliness issues when painting at home and how to deal with safety issues in relation to art materials

At some stage after you take up art classes in oil painting or acrylic painting, you might want to start painting at home as a hobby. Setting up an art studio sounds like a big venture but doesn't have to be that complicated or all that costly at all. Many people will shy away from the idea because they think of the mess associated with doing art work and they don't want that at home. I am hoping to show you that it doesn't have to be that way. For starters, a lot depends on your chosen medium. If you absolutely want to do oil painting, then there will be solvents around. But even solvents can be contained in the home. The ideal situation of course is if you have a spare room, however small that you can use for your art project. In that case, you can leave your oil paints and solvents on the table and pallette on days when you are not painting. It would be great if you could lock the room, especially if you have children, or child visitors. Don't fear, you can keep the room in an acceptable state. All you really need to fully dedicate to your art is one table, where you keep your pallette, and an easel, which I would say is optional in the very beginning. The floor in that area can be covered with an inexpensive protection such as a drop cloth or an oil cloth, something that will catch bits of paint and spillages of solvents, should they occur.If you don't have a room that you can dedicate to oil painting, don't fret. Keep your art materials in a box in the utility room, basement or garage, together with your oil cloth. Leave your painting to dry flat on a shelf high up somewhere where you know nobody will stack anything else on top. Get a fold up easel when you are ready to committ and store it away with the rest. An oil painting takes about 6 months to dry fully. If you are taking a break between layers, you might leave the painting alone for anything between a couple of days, or weeks, depending on how you are working, how much paint you are applying, what colours you are working with (darker colours dry faster), and whether you are working wet in wet or wet on dry. Just stow everything away safely and Bingo, nobody in the house will mind. Another option to minimise the 'mess' would be to choose acrylic painting. Acrylics are a fantastic material, veryy flexible and easy to use once you know what to do. Acrylic paints of course are water soluble, which means you can wipe up any mess with a wet rag. While the spillage is wet, that is. Once acrylic paint dries, it dries completely, into a plastcised film that adheres to the surface of your painting , or table for that matter, tightly. With acrylics, get in the swing of cleaning up as you go. And for the fainthearted cleaner, there is always watercolour. Watercolour is mostly pigment, nothing else, which means it can be wiped up even days after a spillage. Watercolour paint stays soluble, although some pigments are prone to staining. You are always better off with that oil cloth or other floor cover. I almost forgot about pastels, pastels, too, are a doable art material for painting at home. That is, aslong as you avoid blowing loose pigment across the room! Try to contain it in the one spot on the floor, and after your session get out the hoover. With pastels and watercolours, too, there are some safety concerns regarding children. Although you are not using solvents here, you have to pay attention to the pigments in your art materials. Some of the pigments may be toxic, such as Cadmium based colours. Contain them well after each painting session. When painting with children, always use non- toxic paints that are labelled as such.

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Your home art studio- How to deal with waste disposal in relation to art materials in your home art studio.

If you chose oil painting, more than likely you will be working with solvents, such as turpentine or white spirits. I am saying more than likely, because there are now some safe solvents on the market, solvents that are kind to humans and the environment, such as 'Studio Safe' and simialar compounds.They will be a bit more costly than the common solvents which might be one factor guiding your decision making, or they could be difficult enough to source. In Ireland, for example, you will have to buy them in from the U.K. which will mean extra charges for carriage, and this will be hard to do unless you get together with a group of likeminded people and share the cost. Also, opinions on these new environmentally friendly solvents are divided, some artists say they feel that they are not as effective as the old fashioned solvents. By and large my own opinion is that if you can source them, if you can afford them, and if you can make them work for you, they are the preferable option by far. But for arguments sake let's say you are working with turpentine or white spirits. In terms of disposing of them, this is what we do. Never ever poor them down the sink, or down the tolet. Like petrol or other petrochemical products they have the capacity to pollute large amounts of water really quickly. So here is what you do. You work with two jam jars. One contains turpentine/ white spirit, and you have just washed your brushes in it. the pigment that has washed off will be dispersed throughout the liquid at first. But if you leave the jar standing for a day or so, the pigment will have settled at the bottom, which will enable yo to pour off the clear liquid at the top. This, you will reuse. The other jar you will leave standing without a lid until all the remaining liquid has evaporated, and then you can throw it in the bin. When it comes to washing your brushes, make sure you have dabbed them off really well in the jam jar, taking off all the paint, then dab them dry on a paper towel or absorbent rag taking off as much of the solvent as you possibly can, and only then go to the sink and wash your brushes thoroughly with soap. For rags you can use paper towels quite effectively, and dispose of them to landfill as well. Definetely do not wash any rags with substantial amounts of solvents on them under water or in the washing machine. Let the liquid evaporate, keep reusing them, and eventually throw them out. The remaining bits of oil paint from your pallette can be wiped off with rags or paper towels, and can go in the bin. Don't be tempted to throw you paper towels in the fire. You would be taking the risk of starting a house fire.
With acrylic painting, too, you have to protect the ground water. Acrylics essentially are plastics, and in liquid form they are pollutants in your art studio. Again, you can use the jam jar system, even better a 'shallow basin' system, and let the water evaporate, pouring off the clear water at the top. Make sure you wipe off your brushes as best as you can. Clean you pallette by either letting the acrylics dry and then scraping them off, or wiping them off while they are still wet and disposing of the paper towel in the bin. Always work to minimise the amount of paint you release into the water system. Again, don't burn your rags/ paper towels. As I said, we are talking plastics here, and I think we all know these days that burning plastics releases dangerous dioxins. Landfill is the place for them until the day we have a recycling facility for all types of plastic.
Once you know these basics we hope you will feel the idea of painting at home in your own art studio to be less of an overwhelming challenge. Painting is a very satifying and relaxing hobby to take up.
If you are local to Galway: If you'd like to learn at an art school Galway art school is your place for local art classes.  We teach art classes in acrylic painting and oil painting. Our beginners art classes teach the basic techiniques and once you master these you will be able to work on your own projects at home.

On the next page read about free and cheap art materials, and on my suggested common sense approach to buying from an art supply store. Click here.

To return to the top to read about starting a fine art studio, click here.
To read about painting classes at our art school, click here.
To see the home page and read about Galway Art School, click here.

Galway Art School Limited of Tonemace, Corrandulla, County Galway, Ireland is a private limited company registered in Ireland, company registration number 508171. Directors: Colm Sweeney, Susanne Borner (German).
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