How I organize my drawing, watercolor, urban sketching supplies

  Two china cabinets stand in my dining room, one filled with dishes and small knick-knacks, reminders of travels and special occasions. The other devoted to all of the small supplies I use for my work on paper every day. I store these things in what I have termed the 'clean room'. The dining room. In the clean room, I do illustrations, all paperwork, and ink my sketches. Why 'clean'? It is in contrast to the dangers of acrylic contamination in my studio that the 'clean room' got its name. In short, my studio is a mess. As a naturally tidy and organized person, I had to consciously choose to spend my precious studio time painting rather than making it look nice. This can be frustrating at times but I find it vital to actually being able to create work. I don't spend much time as I would like there, meaning that I often leave paint tubes, rags, and palettes laying around. Canvases are stacked along the wall and a big shelf holds work in progress. Not a friendly environment for illustrations. Thus, the clean room was born- or upcycled? I love dining so it is important to me to keep my illustration and urban sketching things out of the way yet still accessible.

One of my favorite 'new' tools are the Inktense pencils that I bought in Italy. It seems fitting to keep them in this Italian tomato sauce jar. Thinking of my trips to Italy is something I enjoy doing so, win-win.

   I bought this taxi the first time I did a children's art seminar. Whenever there is a group of people here to draw I usually fill each of the partitions with pencils, brushes, eraser sticks, pens, etc... During the in-between times, I just keep a handful of useful drawing material for my own use.

  The bottom shelf contains any paint that either needs to be stored separately from the studio cart with the other paints tubes and bottles or is used on paper. The small tubes are all oil paints. The ones on the far right are a set I bought in Italy, each one is made of earth from a different part of the country. These are one of my personal treasures.

   The middle shelf houses a variety of writing instruments from fineliners to calligraphy pens, pencils to colored pencils. I also keep my finest brushes here. My Rotring pen is in the tray and I keep sharpeners in the white bowl.

   On the top shelf, I have a box of those messy drawing products like charcoal as well as the pouches and rolls I use for my materials when out and about. In the back is a tin with extra postcards for urban sketching and on the left is a small pile of canvas magnets- I recently did a fun project with these that diminished the stack. At the very front is my flat, fold out, daylight lamp.

 

   Here are the aquarelle and guoache paints, as well as Stanley knives and carbothello pencils.

 Canvas magnets (above) and my storage system for my finished urban sketching postcards. I store them by category in the tin boxes they came in.
  I store all my other paper seperately.

   Oh yes, and that white ceramic jar to the left of the taxi on the top shelf is my extra, extra secret chocolate stash.

   Are you an artist? How do you store your supplies? Let me know in the comments.

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