For the past four to five years,
my office and studio changed it from a corner of a room
to a part of a garage, it didn't work.
And it also proves that you don't need a big
and fancy studio space to be an artist.
That being said, I have always wanted my own studio space
where I can work and enjoy myself.
And recently, my dream came true in the form
of a tiny house.
So today, I want to share with you the story
of this tiny house and give you a tour of it.
And by the way, I made a new intro animation.
Hey, this is Eric from Café Watercolor
and welcome to my new studio.
Now Café Watercolor has a physical space.
Before, I have been working at a corner of my garage,
and it works.
I got enough space for me to paint, film and do work.
Then last year the pandemic hit, I started to work from home
full time.
It started to become a bit tough even though my garage
is insulated it still get quite hot during summer
and cold during the winter.
Especially during the summertime I need to have a fan
full blast on my face to keep myself cool.
Aside from that the garage is also known to crawl with bugs,
so I occasionally got visited by spiders and flies,
especially during the summer when a garage door is open.
More over the garage space is also doubled as a laundry room
in my home.
So my family will come and do laundry while I'm working.
And as you know, I have to film and record audio
for my YouTube videos.
So there are times when I need to do laundry,
I'm also recording, I will ask my wife to just leave it
at the garage and I will do it for her later after I'm done
filming.
So maybe that's why she always does it when I'm recording.
Anyways, as you can imagine a garage is fine as an office
and studio space, but it's far from ideal.
So last year, I reached out to a tiny house builder here,
Seattle Tiny Homes.
I talked to them about my tiny house art studio project.
And the reason I want to have a tiny house
is that I really wanna separate space that I can enter.
So as sort of mentally and emotionally transformed me
into working and creative mode.
It'll be a little bit harder if there's just an extension
or part of the house that I'm living.
And second is that I really just loved the idea
of a tiny house I think is super cute.
And I can customize it to fit my personal need.
So the people at Seattle Tiny Homes work with me to come up
with the design fits my need.
The COVID delay everything so I have to wait
quite a bit longer than usual to get my tiny house
but it was finally finished building recently.
Now the tiny house is done, the land is prepped,
but there is a huge challenge because the pathway
to my backyard was a bit narrow.
And I had to fill the sides a little bit but I didn't know
the house will be quite tall.
So when they tried to pull the house in, one of the tree
is in the way.
So we got a tree on one side and the roof of the house
on the other side.
They were really patient and slowly maneuver around it.
And after taking a gutter out they were finally able
to pull through, literally.
So a huge shout out to the delivery couriers
Seattle Tiny Homes, they were super patient and careful.
So after the house has settled, I've been busy moving things
from my garage to the tiny house studio.
And now here we are.
This is like a dream come true, not only do I have my
own studio but also a self-sufficient tiny house.
I'm really really thankful for this place and a support
I got from my family and from you.
Because without a little success I have with this channel
I likely won't get a dedicated studio.
It is not a big studio, it is a eight by 16 tiny house,
but there are quite a few unique things about it.
Okay, enough talk, let's go on a tour of my new studio.
Okay, so here it is my tiny house studio at a glance
and I am going to give you a tour of the place
not a big place but it has everything that I need.
So here is my painting station.
So my easel everything still here, same palette, everything
and my setup.
I will talk about my setup in other videos.
There's a lot to go through.
But what you can see is that I set up my camera
and everything here so that I can record my video.
And as you can see
there is a huge wooden beam
that I asked them to install because I need to attach
all of my camera equipments and also an addition
of lighting.
I have an iPad attachment here so I can look
at the reference that I'm painting.
And this painting is by a wonderful Brazilian artists,
watercolor artists, Marcos Beccari.
He is amazing artists here.
And this is a digital work from my good friend
and also a really good concept artists Darren Bacon.
Had a really fun art with the Cybertruck.
The lighting right now it's really nice,
I got this afternoon lighting and the shadow of the tree
casting on the frosted window, it's really beautiful.
I installed this screen myself, just so that I can sometimes
open the window and let the air flows through up here.
And I'm pretty sure you can recognize who this is by.
This is a small painting from Joseph Zbukvic.
I have two more of his painting in my home.
But this one I really like.
So I'd like to just put it right up where I'm painting
so I can take a look at it and inspire by it.
And here we have a painting by Andy Evansen.
And up there is my own painting.
And I will show you the other painting when I get up there.
Down here is my computer where I do my work and edit video
and everything.
I got two computer because one is my personal computer
right here.
And the other one that's the computer sent there
from my day job from my studio.
So I'm also work at home full time, so I got two computers.
So I switched them around.
I have kind of like a USB switch down here.
So I only need to use one pair of mouse and keyboard
to switch between computer.
But this is my personal computer right now,
where I'm doing my work.
And this is my coffee station,
where I make my espresso during the morning.
Not that I have a separate dedicated space,
I don't need to worry about grinding coffee and making noise
early in the morning that will wake people up.
I can come here and start to make my own coffee
and start my day.
And,
very, very nice, I got this rack installed myself
hanging my coffee.
And this is almost kind of like a ritualistic area
of how nice this is.
I'm so happy about this space.
Okay, so this beautiful portrait
and this awesome painting is done by the same artist,
Nick Runge.
And that's his signature right there.
So I got this small painting, and I think is perfect
for this space, so I just put up here.
And like just like the simplicity and expression
on the portion.
It's almost feels like she is smelling the coffee
and feeling pretty good.
Okay, so over here, my guitar,
I pick it up and play some time.
And one of my action figure and some books.
And here I got a sign, we see open but outside is as close.
So the reason I have that is that I will let my family
and people know that if I'm available or not.
Okay, right now I'm filming so they see closed,
so they won't come knocking on the door.
But when I flip it open, it means that people can come in,
drop in, have a drink, and kids can come in
and have a little bit of fun.
And yeah, so this is a good way to let them know
if I'm available or not.
And over here is underneath the stair,
quite a bit of storage.
So here I have some of my action figure,
my toys, stuff that I like.
I already get rid of a lot of it because it's just simply
not enough space.
But some fun stuff and here is some of my book.
And here's something very very special.
My friend gave me this Bob Ross Funko Pop figure.
About two years ago, after I move everything here
I got this tiny little easel from the art store.
And I did this tiny painting actually referencing
from one of Bob Ross painting.
So I just thought I'd do that and match the figure,
turns out pretty nice and cute, I really like it.
And down here some more books and there's a microwave
so I'm hungry, I can actually get some stuff to eat.
Here I store my paintings here,
and some painting equipments and so on.
Here also some paintings and papers.
So I'm really glad I actually have a good place to store
all of my papers and painting before I kind of have to find
a place to put them.
Now I have a good place to fit all my paper in.
Also underneath here is a little fridge here
and right now it's mostly just milk that I need to use
for latte.
But it's nice that I can store some food in there in case
I'm hungry.
And they did a pretty good job in the storage.
They're all so close.
So coming in here, through this pocket door,
it is the bathroom.
So it's quite nice, because trees all around,
it's actually quite private.
So this is a composting toilet, and it's actually
pretty good I use a few times.
And this way, I don't need to hook up sewer,
because if I just washing my hand and stuff,
I can just have it dumped on my backyard and it's fine,
it's just a little bit amount of water.
But for a toilet, I actually just wanna set up
a composting toilet.
And, a lot of time I would just go into my main house
and go on my business.
But sometimes if I just really don't want to leave,
I can use this composting toilet, it's really fine.
And,
right here, this couple of rock, I picked them up
from the Cannon Beach, I saw these rocks are very nice,
very beautiful.
So I pick up a few of it.
My razor blade is here because I usually remember to shave
right before I'm filming my video.
So that's why I just put it here because I'm filming here
anyways.
Shower, I haven't been using it.
So it's a small bathroom, and a small sink.
But it's sufficient, it's quite nice.
Okay, coming back here and as we go up to the stair.
So one thing that I really want is to have a little
sitting area, I put a cushion here
so people can sit on here.
And my wife was just here, she was sitting on here
and having a drink.
So this is something I really want so I work with them.
This is a very high first step, but I insist to do that
because I want a good sitting area.
However the people in Seattle Tiny Homes,
they are really nice.
So they made this extra stool.
So this allow me to actually create the first step
to go up to the stair.
So it's very nice of them.
I didn't ask them to do this, because I thought I can just
sit on this and they just can go up like that.
But they create this nice little first step.
So this is actually quite nice.
And when I'm sitting down, I can actually put my feet here,
quite comfortable.
So it's going up.
Of course, my 100,000 subscriber YouTube play button
has to be here, proudly display.
And again, I have you to thank for that.
And eventually, if that ever happened,
if I wish ever reach like a million subscriber,
I'll probably put it here if that will ever happen.
But of course my Café Watercolor logo,
I just put it right here.
And let's go up there to the loft.
So going up to the loft, and you can see it's actually
a very nice base, but this is pretty small.
So when I go through this, I actually have to kind of crawl
in.
So that's why I got a Japanese tatami on it.
So it's gonna be a little bit easier for my knees.
So here is the loft.
Again, that painting is by me one of my favorite painting
this past two years, I think.
And I put the Kemper bedroll on here,
so I can take a nap here when I'm feeling tired,
or something when I work pretty late, I will camp out here
at night.
This beautiful, beautiful painting is by Nick Alm.
Another Nick, he's a Swedish artist.
So if you see some similarity between his watercolor work
and Zoran's work.
You're right, they're from the same place.
Very, very beautiful painting.
That's why I kind of display a high up here.
Here's a bean bag so I can sit here and read a book
and enjoy stuff.
Okay, and this is what I'm looking at when I am sitting
on this bean bag.
So this is the view.
This is really really nice, I asked them to put
a skylight here so that I can look at it
when I am just chilling up here with my bean bag
and when I'm taking the afternoon nap.
And at night, if I turn everything off,
if I turn all the light off, you actually see some stars.
It's really really nice.
Okay, so this is the view up here.
Okay, there's a nice LED light.
But up here you can see all the cables that's hitting up
here so they are very, very nice when they make
this wooden beam they actually make it
so that I can kind of hide my cable underneath it.
I also took a light up there.
So at night, there's a little bit of light up there,
when I don't want everything really bright.
Okay, so one thing that they did very, very nicely
is that they actually make a custom desk for me.
So everything you see up on the desk right now
is on the custom desk.
So what's so cool about this desk is that
there's a little bit of a interesting feature on this.
So they make a small compartment here
where I can put all my paint in here.
And when I don't use it, I can just kind of close that.
And it will be a nice space to put my brush and stuff on it.
But aside from that, they designed the desk in the way
that there's some gap behind it.
So is a very, very nice for cable management,
because I have quite a bit of cables back there.
As you can see back there, there's a lot of cables.
I mean, you can imagine with two computers
and all this filming equipments, I have to find a way
to manage all of the cables.
So I can run through the back of the desk that they made.
And I can run just all the cable down there.
So I can just leave the mess behind the desk.
So that I can get a lot of the cable management out of it.
So this wonderful, wonderful custom desk,
I'm really thankful for the work Seattle Tiny Homes
has done for that.
Okay, so that's it for my tiny house studio.
Again, not a really big space, but it is a personal space
that I really enjoy being here.
And it's in my backyard, and my backyard is full of trees
around the neighborhood.
So it's got quite a bit of privacy actually,
and almost feel like a tree house because it's surrounded
by a bunch of trees.
So I hope you enjoy this little tour.
So I hope you enjoyed that a little tour
of my new studio space.
Hopefully this place will last me for a very long time.
Again, I'm so grateful for this place and I'm really
looking forward to create more content here in this place.
I also have some exciting new things coming up
for a Café Watercolor.
I just need to find time to do them all.
I am also planning to do a video of my video setup.
I have quite a few people asking me about the equipment
that I'm using.
So I'm sure there are many people interested
in that as well.
If you're new here to this channel, welcome.
Please consider giving a like and subscribe,
ring the bell icon so you will get notification
from my new video.
I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are.
I'm going to make some coffee for myself.
And I'll see you again very soon.
(upbeat music)