Free-standing adjustable lamp with daylight bulb- essential.

A gooseneck lamp clamps onto the shelf of my easel, but a wrestling match ensues every time I need to redirect its frustrating little beam of light on another tiny patch of picture. Best use: casting bright, color corrected light over the palette. I needed a moveable lamp on a stand and was pleased to find this one, a strong daylight bulb in a metal reflector with a cool wooden handle at the back end. There’s even a clever ball joint to make rotating easier. I know I’m cheap, but I can’t believe I waited this long to buy a good lamp: I can finally see what I’m painting. You can’t have enough good light.

Best cheap painting fixer ever: a grayscale value finder.

I can never tell by eyeballing a picture where the values really are; all I know is the whole thing’s too damn dark. This little card will verify that, yes, it’s too damn dark. Since I constantly misplace these things and get painty thumbprints all over them, I keep a bunch handy.

A hand mirror shocks if used properly and I don’t mean if you catch sight of yourself graying prematurely.  Reverse the painting and see your mistakes instantly. Such fun!

A newly done painting that’s been brushed with a 50/50 mix of Galkyd and Gamsol and left to dry. The procedure is called “oiling out”(a new phrase for me) employed to even out the surface’s different levels of dullness and gloss. Kind of like varnish, but you can go back and paint on top of it. Good video tutorial by Gamblin is here.

I made the matched set of low-tech canvas-varnishing props in the photo above by eating six pints of gelato, not all at once and not by myself, God help me.

By the way, does anyone know where I can buy a reduction lens- the opposite of a magnifying glass? They’re outstanding if you work in a little room and can’t back up very far. I wish I still had one, but it seems they’ve gone out of production, or fashion. It’s just another useful tool, nothing fancy; my kind of implement.

Happy Friday.