{"id":7742,"date":"2016-07-12T09:26:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T09:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/about.35.197.208.187.nip.io\/?p=7742"},"modified":"2025-09-24T07:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T07:37:11","slug":"setting-home-studio-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/insights\/setting-home-studio-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting up your studio on a budget"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Zealous artist Robert Hewer gives us his tips on setting up a home studio on a budget. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DIY shops are your best friend when setting up a home studio[\/inlinetweet]. All the basics you need can be found in in any big brand DIY shop and it\u2019s all pretty good value. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First things first: you need to protect the walls and floors, that is, unless you want to cover them with paint. I just buy some of the thin polyolefin painting covers for the walls and standard tarp for the floor. If, like me, the floor in your home studio is unfortunately carpet, then you get MDF planks that slot together to give you a hard, steady floor quickly and cheaply – normally they\u2019re used as loft flooring, if you\u2019re struggling to find them. This means you don\u2019t have to worry about any paint or other substances leaking through! <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If someone invents a rewind button, I’d be on that immediately<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Another thing I found very useful are wallpaper paste tables. They’re great for using as a mixing table, or just to give you a good surface to put stuff on. You can usually pick them up for around \u00a310. Lastly, if you\u2019re a painter and want a big mixing pallet, you can just buy a large single gloss finish floor tile. It\u2019s cheap and the paint won’t dry out as it’s not porous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, in terms of other kit that you\u2019ll need – speaking as a painter now, obviously if your medium is different then you do you – my five essential tools are mini rollers, wide household paint brushes, a meter ruler, liquitex heavy & light body acrylic paint, and winsor & newton acrylic gloss medium. When I begin working, the first thing I get out are the mini roller trays. I always mix up my main colours in these. They\u2019re also pretty handy if you want to then save the colours you\u2019ve made, just put the tray into a carrier bag and you can leave it for a couple of weeks before it drys out. Obviously there is a lot of stuff that will just depend on your own practice and how you work, but this will give you a pretty good starting point for your own home studio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technology-wise, the only thing I really use is Photoshop to edit my images before I paint them, and I\u2019m sure in the future art and technology will become more entwined, but right now I\u2019m happy with not relying on it too heavily. Although, if someone invents a rewind button, I\u2019d be on that immediately, or a machine that saves colours you have mixed up in the past – that would be incredibly useful when trying to recreate a colour that\u2019s worked well in the past, or for when you\u2019re just feeling lazy. I\u2019m sure we all have those days every once in a while – though having a good, functional studio, one that you really want<\/i> to work in, does help to keep them to a minimum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert will be exhibiting some of his work at Artwave West<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Guy Armitage<\/a> is the founder of Zealous <\/a>and author of “Everyone is Creative<\/a>“. He is on a mission to amplify the world’s creative potential.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zealous artist Robert Hewer gives us his tips on setting up a home studio on a budget.  DIY shops are your best friend when setting up a home studio[\/inlinetweet]. All the basics you need can be found in in any big brand DIY shop and it\u2019s all pretty good value. First things first: you need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-post-insight-creative","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[907,910],"class_list":["post-7742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights","tag-legacy","tag-managing-awards"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zealous.co\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}