Some questions from e-mail answered including one on studio wall color.

1930 Dusenburg. Could any car have been more elegant?

1979 citivan built by citicar. Looks like a doorstop, it matters what stuff looks like.

I will answer a couple of my e-mailed questions tonight.

"Stape; Love your blog, and find it generous, crisply-written, betrays not a hint of egotism and is always encouraging. But it looks like a ton of work, and the selfish bastard in me has me wondering why you do it, considering your busy schedule as painter ,teacher, entrepreneur, spouse, what have you. From their timedates, your blogs look like the last conscious thing you do at the end of what must be an exhausting day. I’m no spring chick, and am pretty sure we’re roughly the same age. At midnight, or whenever you find time to write your blog, I’m fast asleep!"

It is a ton of work and I do it the last thing every day. Sometimes I am exhausted. Here with bullets is why I do it.

• Remember when I wrote about Earl Nightingale here. Earl talks about the importance of being a leader in your field and working towards being an expert in your field? The blog is part of that. I have to study to write it so it is a learning experience for me too. The economy has made it harder to make it as an artist, Doing this blog is part of my adjustment to that reality.If you want more out, put more in.
  
• Last time I looked, I had 39 comments tonight thanking me for doing the blog. I get thank you notes every day in my e-mail, I like that, it is affirming and I will work for praise. I like to feel useful and valued. That is I suppose a little shallow, but I am hooked up that way.
• I am a natural pedant, I like to pontificate and the blog gives me the opportunity to be a blowhard and get away with it. I talk all the time, it seemed like a natural fit,
  
• I do know a lot of esoteric art stuff, having spent a life studying it, starting as a child. I knew the orders of furniture before I knew the facts of life. I didn't marry until I was thirty five because it took that long to find a woman with cabriole legs and ball and claw feet.
• When I was a younger man I found amateur artists irritating because they didn't know much about art. At some point I figured out that since the art schools and the media didn't teach it, it was wrong to fault them for something that I could have told them. The onus was on me to tell them what I was disappointed that they didn't know.
• I was taught to paint by Ives Gammell who was raising up a pack of Jesuits to change the art world. This is my contribution to that end. It is my way of having an effect on the art world rather than just grousing about it in bull sessions with my fellow artists.
• I will die. I have seen a lot and known a lot of artists, that should be documented. I have been a fly on the wall so many times and it would be irresponsible not to set it down.
• I post the blog at whatever time and then go back in and reset the timedates for the next day. That means that when people wake up and read it with their morning coffee it bears that days date. It is published late at night but is dated for the next day.
  

Here is another:
"We recently converted our garage into a studio for me and I'm faced with choosing the wall and ceiling colors.
I saw something online about painting studio walls dark grey to cut down on glare: http://www.sadievaleri.com/blog/2010/12/22/faq-winged-victory-cast-and-studio-wall-color.html
However, I'm not sure this is the best idea for my space because it doesn't get much natural light anyway- Just two skylights and a small south facing window in the door.
I'll be using the space for painting as well as my office.
Any suggestions?"

You said your space is a little dim, if you need to maximize the light I suggest Linen white. It is a WAY off white and my studio is painted that color. It is close to ivory. Pure white is too much, linen white seems about as close as you can get without it being too antiseptic and having too much glare. That should maximize your light. If you have plenty of light, I would go further still off-white towards a gray or dove color. I would avoid a strong color as it would affect your painting by being an ambient bias in the color of the light in your studio. Rubens had a dull red color in his studio and I painted a gallery that color once. It was a nice space and I was happy working in it. Remember the floor is also a reflective surface and you want to take that into account also, if you have a dark floor, that will absorb a lot of light and make your studio darker. I have an oak floor which is very dark and that is one of the reasons my northlight studio has off-white walls.