In this walkthrough, Christie Renee Hawkins gives a candid, step‑by‑step tour of her home art studio, highlighting how she has organized a chaotic space into a functional, beginner‑friendly work area. She starts at the top of the stairs where a gallery wall is under construction, then moves to a custom paint wall built from 1‑by‑2 wood slats that hold 2‑ounce DecoArt paint bottles arranged by color rather than brand. Two silver rolling carts let her transport selected paints to any workstation. Hawkins shows a color‑mixing chart that visually maps which primary colors combine to make secondary hues, recommending it for newcomers. The main workstation, built by a friend, incorporates Amazon 5‑drawer units with clear acrylic bins for separating supplies, a laptop stand, multiple ring lights, and a power strip for extensive cord management. She explains how she stores watercolor paper, pens, markers, resin, mixed‑media tools, brushes, sponges, spray paints, sealers, palette knives, and various acrylic mediums across drawers, open shelves, and a large open‑space area for canvases and tracing paper. Throughout, she emphasizes the importance of segmenting frequently used items (brushes, markers, Posca pens, color wheels) for easy access, and she shares practical tips for maintaining an organized, efficient painting environment.
Chapters
Okay, so I'm going to give you guys a quick studio tour. It is still a hot mess. Not everything is organized. It's a work in progress. So, um, this is the top of my stairs where my actual studio space is. So I've started a gallery wall. It's not done. I've taken things down, still moving stuff around. Um, then you come around here. I've got two of these silver carts that are fantastic when you want to come over to the paint wall and pick out a bunch of colors that you think you might want to use in your painting. I load them up on this cart and then I roll it over to wherever I'm working. So this is the paint wall that Corey created for me. These are just 1x2 pieces of wood that he has nailed into the wall to hold all my 2-ounce paint bottles, which is what I use the most of, mostly DecoArt. I like to color coordinate mine, not keep my brands together because it's more about the color. I don't really care as much about the brand. If it's the color I need, that's what I'm looking at when I'm choosing from my paint wall. And then down below my craft acrylics are all of my heavy-bodied acrylics. Same thing, he's not quite done with this. We need more pegs. I have more colors. And then I also do all of like my specialty paints like the Extreme Sheen, Glamour Dust, Craft Twinkles, my metallics, all of that on the bottom shelf as well. Then come over here. These are some just different art books and ideas and references that I keep. Obviously my TV is up here. Underneath that I put my color mixing chart, which I love. If you are new to mixing colors, I highly recommend getting one of these. It tells you what colors to mix to get what color you want. So if you find a color on here you want, like this purple, you know that you need cerulean blue, And then you come down here with the magenta. And that's just a— this is to just get you familiar with color mixing. So great guide, super helpful. Just have a couple more of my paintings over on this wall. Over here is the big workstation that Corey built me. And we got several of these units from Amazon where it is the 5 drawers and then the door. So you've got the shelving in here, and I use like clear acrylic drawers and tubs to separate my things in, and then 5 different drawers. Uh-oh, this one's getting stuck. That's my watercolor paper, some extra pens and markers. Here's my resin supplies, some like mixed media stuff I might use, all of like just essentials in here. But this is just a great way to separate your supplies. This is kind of like my mixed media side of my station. You can see up top I've got my laptop. I was just using my laptop stand. I have several different ring lights of different sizes and capacities as far as what they can do, all on there. At the beginning of this, you saw a power strip. I use lots of cords and outlets. These open spaces on the end are great for storing your most used canvases, my drawing board, tracing paper, anything big that's not going to fit in drawers is great to put down there. Then this is the main side that I use. So in planning that, I wanted to put everything in here that I use most often. So I have all my paintbrushes in the top. I have all of my markers. These are my Posca pens, pencils and regular pens, Sharpies and all my gold ones. Both of my color wheels in here. Those will probably end up going somewhere else. This is temporary. All my extra sponges and rollers and all that kind of stuff. Then I've got some spray paints, um, finishes to cover if you want to seal your paintings. And then I've got a bunch of different sealers down here as well, extra rough brushes and palette knives. I always want to make sure I have plenty of these old brushes. As well. And then all my different mediums, so gloss, gel, fluid, just some different things. I haven't even tried all of them yet. Then on this side is like my extra napkins, a palette under here, plates, baby wipes, lots of white paint because I use it all the time, all my other pens. So we've got my Arteza pens, my skinny ones, all my black and white ones. And then extra supplies. So that kind of gives you an overview of the workstation and all of the different ways that I'm separating my supplies to make it easier for me when I'm painting.
