5 Essential Items for a Day in the Studio
Raz Barfield, Head of Advanced Programmes, School of Visual Arts gives us an insight into his personal practice with tips for a successful day in the studio including documentation, research, stress management and not forgetting nutrition to make the most of your time and creative progress.
While it is very much reflective of my personal practice and working methods, I hope you will at least find something of interest in the following.
1. Eraser
Drawing is the foundation of visual practice. I paint, I make prints, collage, videos, installations, interactive digital works, and all sorts of other stuff, but drawing comes first. Drawing is like breathing, and, for me, the eraser is the most important drawing implement of all. Without it, you deprive yourself of fully half your mark-making and decision-making options. You have to be able to remove, as well as add. Constant addition results in overload, and noise: imagine a music producer not being able to adjust the volume or effects on any instrument track in the final mixdown, or take it out altogether. My art teacher at school used to boast that he never used an eraser, because he “never made mistakes”. That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how an eraser can be used, and, more tellingly, of the value of mistakes. I buy erasers by the boxful, I have all different sorts on the go at all times for different kinds of purposes: soft ones, gritty ones, clean and dirty ones, others that I cut into particular shapes, to give me certain kinds of marks… You breathe out as well as in, and drawing is every bit as much about what you choose to take out, as what you include.
The next two are generally combined, at least in the way I use them, but they’re not mutually dependent.
2. Phone
Invaluable for documenting your work as it develops; for tracking back, days or even years later, to discover new potential, or uncover ways in which you could pick up and develop ideas you rejected previously; for recording the evolution of ideas; for capturing that brush-mark, that technique, or the spatter of ink running down the wall… what we do unconsciously, in the margins, often ends up becoming the important thing, because it reveals the unguarded moment: record what captures your attention.
With your phone, you can have a library of your own work with you at all times. When Matisse hit a dead end, he used to pull out all his old work, and trawl through it, to discover where he needed to pick up the trail – you have your phone.
Personally, I also use my phone for audio. I don’t find music helpful when I work, but I consume podcasts by the bucket load. History, psychology, philosophy, mystery, politics, satire or just nonsense; ideas and insights come from all sources, help you make connections, and fire off in new directions. A few of my current personal favourites: The Bugle, Hardcore History, The Talking Dead, Monkey Tennis, Intelligence Squared, The Last Post, Alzabo Soup, Revolutions, Invisibilia, Tides of History, Atomic Hobo, In Our Time, Unfictional, The Listening Service, History of English Podcast… and, even though it’s about 10 years old now, the incomparably brilliant BBC/British Museum co-production A History of the World in 100 Objects. And, of course, in the summer, there’s Test Match Special on the BBC – perfect studio listening.
3. Laptop
Adds dimensionality in every way: I can search for images, or techniques; I can Google some event or person that I just heard about on a podcast; I can download photos I just took and try an idea digitally before I commit to something that will fundamentally transform a painting in progress... (If I’m making one of my string installations in an exhibition space, I can map sections out on the laptop and project onto the wall to determine the fixing points, without committing to anything prior to starting.) In short, it can help me to keep my working process live and editable at all stages.
Sometimes, the works starts life digitally: I’ll make a very simple compositional structure for a large drawing, in Illustrator, and this lets me try literally hundreds of alternatives until I’ve got it exactly as I want it. Then, rasterizing it to a pixel size the same as the x/y dimensions of my paper in millimetres, I know precisely where to set the key points of the composition.
Despite their immense power in processing representation, and in visualising ideas, the phone and laptop haven’t replaced the sketchbook for me. Nothing can. What they let me do instead is work through ideas and alternatives infinitely faster, and this has changed the way I use my sketchbooks. These have become a very different kind of space: strangely, one significantly more focused on the experience of time, the narrative of the unfolding idea, and the significance of the various decisions involved in making work. The digital working space has no pathos; the sketchbook has nothing but. One is a lens, the other is a mirror.
4. Coffee and Energy Bars
Self-explanatory, whatever your version of these things happens to be, to keep you going through the day. Studio time is precious: keep your energy levels up, so you can make the most of it. On long winter nights, for me, this tends to become red wine, or whisky and chocolate, and, if it’s a special year, radio commentary of the Ashes from down under.
5. Rubber Ball, or Stress Toy
Maybe this only applies to me, but I find it useful to have something to take out my frustration on when things go wrong – as they invariably do – for that moment in between the mistake, and the point when I start to see it for the breakthrough it ultimately turns out to be.
Raz is Head of Advanced Programmes, School of Visual Arts - this includes Applied Arts, Fine Art Practice, Professional Practice courses.
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