Office Tour! (Patreon)

I'm a bit of a sucker for seeing other artists' workspaces, so I thought I'd give you a little tour of my office! I dunno, maybe this is boring af for some people, but for me I love seeing the environment people work best in. So without further ado, let me give you the tour of my little creative sanctuary <3

First up is the plant corner. I got into gardening about three years ago and fell in love with succulents. They're pretty year round and I love taking care of them (they don't really require much attention). They make me feel really peaceful, so I have... lots. In this photo you can see my storage full of plant care accoutrements, and the box on the far left is full of printed copies of my comics (some of which I'll sell online at some point). Middle shelves are just for important documents and theatre programs (which are too tall to fit on any of our bookshelves -.-). 

Bonus: Sebastian, my son, who is very good and doesn't disturb my plants. 

Here's where all the actual work gets done! My equipment is extremely old and extremely basic. I have a 9 year old iMac and (just peeking at the bottom) my 15 year old Intuos 3 Wacom tablet. How they've lasted me this long, I don't know, but I'm not complaining!

The shelves on the left house my traditional art supplies and bookmarks in the little boxes. Candles (hot chocolate and melon scented, for winter and summer respectively ;) ). The print is by artist Xiao Bai.  More plants and a dragon age inquisition mug to house all my ballpoint pens completes the top shelf.

The shelves on the right have some figures of my fave characters/things. Garrus Vakarian (Mass Effect) and Lying Cat (Saga) are the pop figures. A velociraptor (Jurassic Park is one of my fave films) and a flamingo, along with some seashells I got on my trip to Portugal. Middle shelf just has my agenda (keeps track of all my work/deadlines/appointments) and a journal I write in about life (most of my posts like the burnout one were written there first). There are a couple of coins, one of them a Canadian quarter I just think is pretty, and the other is a Canadian toonie celebrating the 150th birthday of Canada. It has the Northern lights on it and it glows in the dark. Below that are all my sketchbooks, notebooks and some copies of my comics to reference when I'm working on them!

Moving onto my traditional desk, this I keep pretty clean most of the time. The turquoise basket is just to house 'to-do' items like forms I need to fill out or things I need to take to the post office. The paint set is Holbein Acryla Gouache (102 colours) and I've made a palette so I can see how they look on paper. This paint set is life for me. I love it so much. One day, I want to build a wooden tiered display for all the paint tubes, but until then they just live in their box. The painted shawl on the wall was a birthday gift from a friend. I could wear it... but I prefer to have it on the wall where I can look at it every day :P

Lastly, my scratch map of the world! I can scratch off all the places I've been on it, but I haven't taken it down to do so in about two years so I've got a few things that still need scratching... I've only scratched the provinces/states I've been to in North America (hence why they're not totally scratched off yet). I'm going to Switzerland this summer for a holiday and I'm STOKED to see mountains and turquoise lakes. The postcards at the top are from some of the places I've been. The reason I moved to the UK is because travel from here is cheap and quick. I can go for a weekend away without burning a hole in my bank account and the flights are usually 2 hrs or less. My girlfriend also travels a lot for work, so sometimes I tag along and we stay the weekend to sight-see. Some of the places I've been: Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, London, Cornwall, Paris, Prague, the Algarve, Barcelona, Sweden (Gothenburg and Stockholm), Gran Canaria, Rome, Malta, Atlanta, Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Philadelphia, New York, Edmonton, and Montreal. And of course, Toronto/Ontario, where I was born. I'd love to go to Singapore, Manilla, Johannesburg, Guadalupe, Cairns and Vancouver (but these are expensive for me so it'll be a while yet before I do). Anyone have a fave travel location I should add to my list, let me know! 

And that's it! I know this is a bit of a weird post but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. Chloe, my other child, would like to wish you all the best. Much love! <3