susan lyon fineart

                       I'm painting Hope the niece of Patty Bailey Sheets ( a friend and artist I paint with) she posed frequently for about a year. Here she is in a traditional outfit I bought in Prague. ( I found this shop in the basement of a building in the old section of the city and was amazed that they had hundreds of real - not costume - outfits that women actually wore. I could only buy 3 full outfits due to luggage space. Behind her hanging on the wall is a painting that Scott had done of her from a previous sitting. This photo was taken around 2003.

                         This photo was taken aound 2004, here I am painting a still life of Roses and Lemons ( the painting is in my book) I'm using a combination of side north light from the big window and daylight florescents blubs from above.

                          You can see from this photo that I am using the big Hughes easel now, I totally recommend it. It's especially nice when you are doing long horizontal paintings, I used to have to move my easel and palette around so I could get the same angle when painting long horizontal still lifes's, with this easel you can move the canvas easily with a light touch of the finger.

I bought the large gymnastic mats from the local YMCA, they are perfect for standing and walking back to see your painting. The big spot light with the angled boom has a powerfull 600 watt bulb. It's nice for when you don't want the tripod to get in your way, you can have it behind you. I usually use this light set up for my downtown studio on Trade for when I have figure models.

Ths is the front of my studio, the view from my deck. Scott dug out the foundation and did the roofing by himself. We hired a couple of guys to do the framing, then we did everything else. At the time we didn't have a lot of money so we tried to make it as simple as possible. It's just a big box with out a closest or bathroom. I do have a loft space for storage. The size is 20 by 24 and has 14' ceilings.