I used to have a room apart in the house for my painting desk. In the new house that’s currently being built, I will have a wargame room to myself again. Nowadays, however, I paint on a movable painting station, as the room I used to paint in, and that still houses my ‘official’ painting desk, is now our daughter’s bedroom.

When Britt started to sleep in her bedroom, instead of in her cot downstairs, I decided to make my painting area transportable. I had seen Games Workshop’s painting station at Phil’s, and initially thought of buying that, but in the end decided to ‘build’ my own. I say build in quotes, because my painting station is simply a piece of 8mm MDF:

As you can see, the thing is basically a square piece of MDF (about 70cm to a side), with all my painting stuff on top of it. Very basic, really. The only out of the ordinary thing about it is that the empty herb pots that hold my brushes are glued to the board, so that they don’t easily get knocked over or thrown off during transport. Otherwise, everything is simply put onto the board: paints in one part of an old lunch bread box, work in progress miniatures in another part, water in two containers (dirty and clean water) that are officially cacao powder shakers for capuccino, an ice cream box lid that used to be white but is now multi-hued as the result of five odd years of use as paint palette, and some kitchen towels to wipe excess water and paint off of the brushes.

Whenever I feel the urge to paint, I go down to the cellar (where I keep the thing), bring up this board, put it on the kitchen table and start painting. I had not quite expected this, but I find that I like painting this way better than sitting apart in a room in the house and paint there. Like this, I’m in (largely) the same room as my wife or daughter (although she’s usually asleep by the time I get painting in the evening). This makes it possible to paint and still talk to my wife (albeit in a limited fashion — I’m male, meaning that my ability to do two things at the same time is, not to put too fine a point on it, inexistant) or listen to the TV background noise and generally feel more a part of things happening around me.

I like this way of painting so much that I’m thinking to continue working like this when we have moved in the new house, where I’ll have a wargames room with a painting desk. We’ll see.