So I got a question to ask you and it's kind of personal, but trust me, I can't see you through my microphone.

And if you're watching this on video, I can't see you through your display.

What is your creative space look like?

I mean, where you go to create?

Is it a desert or is it a trash dump?

That's what we're going to be talking about today on Create Art podcast as part of our new Artists Compass series.

Foreign hey there, friends.

This is Timothy Chemo, Brian, your head instigator for Create Art Podcast.

And you know me, I've got 30 years in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume.

So I've started off this new series.

It's called the New Artists Compass.

And why not start off with new music?

I like the music I just made.

And we're going to talk about how you can set up your space, your creative space, so that way it's going to maximize your creativity.

So creating art isn't really just about having the talent.

You need a space where you can explore that talent, where you can go and be crazy and creative and do all the things you need to do in order to get that piece of.

Get that piece of work, whatever it is, dance, sculpture, painting, music, whatever it is, you need that space in order to create.

It's kind of like a mad laboratory for a mad scientist.

You get to be that mad scientist.

All right, so we're going to be talking about five different ways you can go ahead and create that space and things to think about.

And with the new artist Compass series that I'm doing now, it's mainly aimed at the new artist.

But if you already have a practice, if you, if you're already good to go, then you definitely want to listen in because, yeah, it may be a little bit of, you know, Art 101.

However, you may get some good ideas on, you know, what you can do for your practice to make it even better.

So let's dive into this.

So our first thing we need to think about is choosing a dedicated space.

I know sounds weird, sounds obvious, but you need to choose a space now.

It doesn't have to be huge.

You don't have to have, you know, a 50,000 square foot warehouse in order to create.

For me, I create right here in my basement.

As a matter of fact, just off to the.

You can't see it with my camera here, but just off to my side here, I have this table that we made in college.

In my theater, when I was studying theater in college.

And that's where I do a lot of my creation, so where I do a lot of my paintings.

So some of my writings, I'll sit there and write.

And it's just.

It's my space.

It's what I call my man cave.

And you can call it a woman cave, you can call it whatever you want to call it.

But just make a space can be a closet if it has to be, whatever it needs to be.

Make that space your space.

That's the spot where you go and create.

Just like your bed.

You don't go have dinner in your bed.

So some people do.

Some people eat in their beds and they get crumbs all over the beds.

But whatever that space is, make that space the space where you create.

Now, it can initially start off, you know, bare walls and a folding chair or what have you, but set up that space.

Just say, this is mine.

This is where I'm going to be creating.

And definitely everything you need to have there, have it in that space.

So that way you don't have to go running around the house or your apartment, or you don't have to go, you know, halfway across the city.

In case you get an idea to create something, it's right there in your home.

So find a spot in your house, in your apartment, wherever you're at, to create.

All right, Our next thing is light it up.

All right?

Now, I used to be a lighting designer.

That's what I studied in college, is to be a lighting designer.

And lighting was everything to me.

And directors used to come in and say, I just want to be able to see them.

I just want to see the actors.

You know, I don't want shadows on their eyes or anything like that.

For you as an artist, lighting is very important.

And I don't say that as a lighting designer.

I say that as a human being, as a fellow artist, if you can't see what you're doing, you're not going to be able to make anything.

If you're in a black room with no lights whatsoever and nothing, lighting is essential.

Otherwise you're going to cut a finger off or maybe cut an ear off, and no, you're not going to be Van Gogh.

But lighting is essential.

Now, natural lighting is the best.

If we look back at the Greeks, and I can go on for hours and hours on this, but if you look back at the Greeks, one of the.

The theory is, is that one of the reasons they were able to do a lot of things, they do is because where they were at on the planet, they were so close to the equator and they were getting all that natural lighting on top of them.

That's how they were able to create, you know, all the things that they were able to do.

Now, I.

Lighting psychologically can do a lot of things for you.

If you're under, like, fluorescent lights, they can be really harsh.

And if you have colored lights going on, if you have black lights going on, that can distort the color that you're seeing in whatever you're creating.

And physiologically, you know, your.

Your physical state, it could strain your eyes.

So that way you can't see, or you, you know, you see blurry.

You know, when I take off my glasses, things get a little bit blurry.

So lighting is essential for you.

One thing that I do when I'm doing painting is that especially really detailed painting is that I have these glasses that have a light on them.

So the light is just right above the bridge of my nose, right on my forehead there.

And I'll take off my regular glasses and they'll have a lens in there that will blow things up for me.

So that way I can really see that fine detail.

Now, for riders, you're like, oh, well, you know, I can go into a bar and smokey bar or a coffee shop and have that mood lighting and all that.

Yeah, you can.

You can do that.

But it's best to, you know, have your.

Your lighting set up.

So that way, if you're doing more of a visual art kind of thing, then you can kind of neutralize everything and neutralize the effect of that lighting, except for actually being able to see what you're doing.

This works for dance, too.

You know, I would say if you want to add the lighting effects later on to the piece, that's fine.

But when you're practicing, when you're creating it, you want to have lights that don't distract whoever you have observing it, you know, watching you do it to make sure that you're making all the moves correctly.

And if you're, you know, a solo artist where, you know, you don't have anyone looking over your shoulder or directing you, maybe you're videotaping yourself doing a dance or what have you do it with, if you can, natural lighting.

Now, if you're in, you know, London and it's always raining there, or Seattle and it's always raining, they're always cloudy.

I know.

Or if you're in Arizona, it's a bright, hot, sunny day, and the light is just Intense.

You can always, you know, diffuse that in your workspace.

Myself, I use blinds and curtains to kind of block out the intensity.

But of course, I'm in my man cave, which is in my basement, and I have a walkout basement, so it's easy for me to, you know, step outside, get inspired, and then come back in and control the lighting there.

So definitely, you got to see what you're doing.

That's what I'm trying to get across to you.

All right, let's talk about our tools.

Whatever we're using to create.

Whatever we're creating, have them handy.

Don't start a session of creativity, of inspiration, and then have to run around the house and.

And grab your stuff.

Whatever tools you need, have them there.

Have them already laid out, ready to go.

Whether it's painting.

Have all your brushes, all your paints, all your canvases, all your palette tools, what have you.

Have your easel there.

Whatever those tools are, have them at the handy.

And then another tool that I would have handy, have your water bottle handy.

Have something to drink there, handy, whether it be tea or coffee or whatever you're doing.

Maybe some snacks I always have with me, and there's not a advertisement for it, but I always have pumpkin seeds because it's.

It's nice to snack on.

It's a nice, healthy snack.

But always have that at the handy and consider that one of your tools, because it's essential that we stay hydrated, we stay healthy, we stay, you know, energized.

Maybe it's a power bar or a protein drink.

Whatever it is, make sure that you have all of your tools there, because if they're cluttered all over the place, if you can't find your stuff, if you're spending more time finding your stuff, then you're living in a dump.

And if you don't have any of the tools and you get started up and you're like, oh, I need to get this.

Oh, I need to get that.

Let me go down to the art supply shop and go grab that.

Then that's just.

You're going to find different things to do.

It's going to break your session there of creating whatever it is that you're creating.

Make sure that you're wearing clothes that are, you know, that.

That you can get dirty in, that aren't too constraining and that are comfortable.

So I want you to be comfortable.

I want everything, you know, laid out for what you're going to be creating and really set that intention of, I'm going to create something Right now.

All right.

Now that we've set up our space, we have, you know, made sure everything is in there that we need to have in there.

Okay.

All of our tools all set up and all that good stuff.

And it's lit, so that way.

And not lit as in, oh, man.

But, you know, with lighting that kind of lit, now we want to personalize it a little bit.

All right?

You can set up a lot of different things in your space.

Maybe it's some of your own artwork.

Maybe it's somebody else's artwork.

I do both.

I like skulls.

I like skulls.

What can I say?

I like having skulls around me.

They're always smiling for me.

They're always smiling.

So that's what I have set up in my place.

And I also have set up.

I've got books in my little library here.

I've got my.

My vinyl collection, my comic book collection here.

So that way, sometimes I'll take a break.

I also have my TV set up here, which I don't.

I don't recommend, because sometimes you can get lost into a TV program or your PlayStation or your Xbox or what have you.

I have that set up for me.

Don't recommend it, but if you have it there, that's fine.

Just keep it off.

Give yourself a break from whatever you're doing.

That way you can look around the room and maybe it inspires something for you for the piece that you're working on.

You can look up and go, oh, hey, there's a skull there.

And they're smiling.

Let me put a smiling skull in this somewhere.

I don't know.

But make the space your own.

You've already dedicated a space for it.

You've already lit the space for it.

So that way it's nice and warm and inviting.

It's, you know, it's organized.

It may not be clean.

You may have, you know, some spiderwebs going on or some dust or whatnot, but at least it's organized.

And now we just need to personalize it, make it you.

Whatever is going to inspire you to continue that work, whether it's a quote on the wall or a child's painting.

I actually have in front of me on the wall a couple of things that my wife and my kids did.

It's the word podcast, with a bunch of different icons all around it, different colors and all that kind of stuff.

And every time I do a pod, it reminds me that, you know, yeah, I'm doing it for me and I'm doing it for you, but I'm Also doing it for them.

It's my longevity, it's my.

It's my legacy that I'm passing on to them.

So that's what inspires me to keep on doing what I'm doing.

So personalize that space for yourself.

It's your space.

If you want to paint the walls all black, paint them all black.

I don't care.

I used to, you know, when I was in the Air Force, my dorm room, I painted it all black because I thought that was cool.

And that's, you know, when I was wearing black eyeline nail polish and, and, and all that kind of stuff.

But whatever that is for you, personalize it.

Make it your own.

All right, now that we've got this set up, we've got the space, we know where we're going to be at.

We've got it lit.

Stop it with it being lit stuff, okay?

You have lighting, all right?

And it's, it's tidy, it's neat, it's organized.

You have all the stuff that you need there.

You have your water, you've got your pumpkin seeds, you've got your energy bar.

And, you know, you, it's.

It's personalized.

You've got, you got inspiration all around you.

You know, you don't got to go anywhere.

You're.

You're in your spot, you're working.

Protect it.

Protect your time and your space, because now it's yours.

And you have done something creative already right then and there, just setting up the space, getting it the way you want it to be.

That's a creative act all of its own.

So get that space set up.

Do everything you need to do to it to get it to be the right spot.

Now, I'm not saying, you know, obsess over it.

Go spend a million dollars on a studio or, or anything like that.

Stuff like this can be done in fairly cheaply.

You don't have to be a millionaire to do this.

You don't have to have all the stuff in there.

All the stuff that you see in my room has taken years and years and years to collect.

And in my life, a little, you know, personal thing about me is that I.

From the time I was 12 until the time I was about 40, I moved every single year.

And now that I've been in my house for a number of years, since about, what, 2014, and it's 2025, as I'm recording this, I've collected a few things.

I've got some.

I've got some stuff.

So it's going to be Horrible.

If I ever decide to move out of here, which I don't think I will, just loading all this stuff up and.

And putting it in the truck and setting another place up.

Ah, no, I'm.

I'm done.

I'm good.

I'm gonna stay right where I'm at and I'm gonna continue to put more things up on the wall.

I'm going to continue to improve my space, improve the lighting, improve the tools that I use, make sure everything's organized.

And I. I gotta tell you right now, it's not super duper organized, but if you're living in a spot that's kind of all over the place, all your.

All your stuff is all over the place, and it looks like a dump.

Take time each and every day, or as much as you can.

Maybe it's 10 minutes.

Clean a little.

Clean a little corner of this up, clean a little corner of that up.

And, you know, just go ahead and get that space set up, because this is for you.

And protect your time, too.

Set a certain time, you know, whether it be once a week, every day, once a month, whatever it is for you, set up that time and protect that time.

Put it on your calendar.

Don't disturb me from this to this on this day, because I'm going to be working on something.

Now.

If you have it all organized and set up and inspiration hits you and it's outside of that time, then you can go right to it and knock it out of the ballpark and have a good time with it.

But if your.

If your stuff is all disorganized, all discombobulated, that's our $42,000 word for this episode, discombobulated.

And I'm wondering if the transcripts will reflect that correctly or not.

Who knows?

But if.

If you get everything all set up, then you can do that creativity on the spur of the moment at any time.

But set up a time where you're going to be doing this.

For me, I do a lot of my recordings on Sunday morning.

My wife, she should be a saint, you know, says, hey, I need you to go create something.

And when it's nice and quiet here.

So usually I get up before everybody, have my coffee, have my water, do some French lessons, do a little bit of meditation, and then I go at it.

I just run right at it.

And I try to squeeze as much creativity out of that time on Sunday mornings as I can, so that way I can get that out of my head.

Now, you know, do I carry notebooks with me?

Do I You know, carry my, my phone with me, and if I have an idea, you know, throw it in a, you know, a voice memo.

Sure, absolutely.

But then I come back here into my space and do some, create some creative projects.

So definitely protect your space and protect your time.

All right, so here's my final thoughts and challenge on this episode for you.

So your workspace can be a work in progress.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

Okay.

Maybe the lighting you can't do anything about because you live in an apartment.

And I remember an apartment I used to live in was very dark and drab in Chicago, had a great view of the lake, but the view of the lake was a very, very tunnel vision kind of thing.

And it had bedbugs, too.

Oh, God.

But it can be a work in progress.

It does not have to be perfect.

You don't have to get it right the first time.

Just continue to work on it.

Okay.

I don't expect, you know, you to have, you know, a 50,000 square foot warehouse and have all the Whiz Bang stuff and, you know, we'll talk about different challenges that you're going to have and different constraints and all that kind of stuff in future episodes, but just make the space for you.

You deserve it.

You deserve a space to create.

No matter where you're at, no matter what your situation, you deserve that space.

So create that space for yourself.

And that's kind of where we start with our creative journey is creating that space where we can feel free to go ahead and do the art that we want to do.

My challenge to you is this.

So you're out there and you have your space.

I'd like to see what your space looks like.

So the challenge is take.

Take a picture of your space.

I'm sure you've got a cell phone.

If you don't, go grab a digital camera or something like that.

But take this picture, your space, and send it to me, and you can email it to me.

Timothyreateartpodcast.com now, if you want me to share it with everybody, that's fine.

I'm happy to do that.

But, yeah, I'm not going to share it unless you tell me I can share it, but I'm just interested in what you have going on, where you're at.

And maybe, you know, I steal an idea or two because that's what good artists do.

We steal ideas all the time.

Maybe it inspires me to do something with my space.

I'm pretty happy with mine.

But for those of you that are listening to the audio pop on over to my YouTube channel, and you can kind of see what my space looks like on the video here.

All right, so that's your challenge.

Now, I don't want you to, you know, go spend a fortune on this stuff.

Put it together slowly, thoughtfully, and deliberately.

But just think of these five, five areas that you're going to need to do.

Finding, you know, creating the, you know, naming the space.

It's your space.

I call mine the man cave.

Make sure it has good lighting.

Not lit, good lighting.

Okay?

Make sure that.

Have that.

Make sure all your tools are, you know, not all over the place, but they're there for you.

And don't forget hydration and food, snacks, pumpkin seeds.

Make sure that's there for you.

Decorate it.

Make it your own.

Put your thumbprint all over it, all right?

And then protect it.

Don't let anyone trash it.

Don't let anyone, you know, even me.

I'll be.

If you send me a picture of it, I'm not gonna, you know, critique it or anything like that.

I'm just, you know, hey, that's a great idea.

Fantastic.

If you want me to share it with everybody, great.

I'm more than happy to do that.

But protect that space in that time because that's what we all need and that's what we all deserve.

All right.

I hope you got something out of this.

This is something new that I'm trying out for Korean art podcast with the video and, and, and the new music and the whole new artist compass idea.

It's something I've been working on for a while now, and you're going to be seeing it for the next, oh, probably six months or so.

I do already have guests lined up for this.

If you would like to be in this series of the new artist studio, Reach out to me.

Timothy Create Art Podcast.com is where you can reach out to me at.

What I'll do is I'll send you the list of topics I'm going to be going over for this whole series.

And let's say you missed one.

That's okay because I'm going to be doing a oops, I didn't get my entry in on time episode, and then I'll be doing a best of episode so you have time to get in there.

Reach out to me.

I'd love to see what your space looks like and I'd love to have you on the show and, you know, get your ideas.

These are going to be conversations.

They're not going to be interviews.

I mean, if you Have a book to sell or something like that, that's fine too.

I don't, you know, I don't care.

But I want these to be more conversational versus so tell me about yourself and what are you doing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

No, we're just going to take these ideas that new artists need to know and we're going to be taking our experiences and talking about them.

So that's what I'm looking for when I'm talking about these conversations.

And if you want to be on this show, I'm interested in hearing what your thoughts are.

So definitely reach out to me.

Timothyartpodcast.com now, if you got something out of this, share it with a friend.

Maybe you've been doing art for years and you got a friend that's just starting up and you're like, man, how do I, you know, yeah, give this, you know, give, give them good ideas on how to start off.

By all means, take this, shoot it on over to them.

I, I'm not going to cry.

Not too much.

No, I won't cry at all, I promise.

I promised myself I wasn't going to cry.

But anyhow, share it with a friend.

Speaking about sharing things with friends, I run another podcast called Find a Podcast about, and you can find it at findapodcastabout xyz.

And that's where I, you know, comb through all the podcasts that are out there and find the ones that I think are binge worthy so that way you can outsmart the algorithm.

So go on over there, check it out.

I even do interviews with some of the podcasters.

And if you're looking for your next binge worthy podcast and to outsmart the algorithm, Find a podcast about is what you need.

Now, this year here in 2025, I did start my own podcast consulting and production company and it's called TKB Podcast Studio.

You can find it at tkbpodcaststudio.com and that's where I help my clients over there lead through the noise with quiet professionalism.

So if you've ever thought about starting up a podcast and you're like, man, that Tim guy can do it, I, I think I can do it.

Absolutely you can do it.

And I'm going to show you how.

Reach out to me over there.

All right, folks, that's all I have for you today.

I hope you got something out of it.

Can't wait for the next episode to drop there for you.

Trying to, gonna try to do these every, every two weeks.

So look out for it in about two weeks from the time that you see it, okay?

Go out there, tame that inner critic.

Create more than you consume.

Start with your space.

Start creating with your space because it's yours.

It's not mine.

It's not Aunt Matilda's.

I don't even have an Aunt Matilda.

But if I did, it's not hers.

It's your space.

And go out there and make some art for somebody you love yourself.

I'll talk to you next time.

It.