I’m walking the streets of San Francisco this week meeting all my recent collaborators, heroes and friends.
My first stop is Woodshop, the collaborative studio of Jeff Canham, Luke Bartels, Danny Hess and Josh Duthie.
These four artists share a love of natural materials and working with their hands.
Jeff Canham’s room is a fully-functioning sign painter’s studio that he designed and built with the help of his studiomates.
Here’s a test sign that Jeff painted while we were talking so I could see exactly how the process works.
In about 3 minutes, the sign was drawn, transferred and painted. This made me want to put my Adobe Creative Suite discs through a wood chipper.
The brushes are kept soaking in automatic transmission fluid, which never dries. I’ve got some in the garage, which I will be pouring over all two of my brushes as soon as I get home.
Here’s the signs he made for the GOOD Neighborhoods Issue. They are much bigger in person than I thought they would be. They looked so cool.
Downstairs where Luke and Josh work there’s is a giant sign and a nice collection of hard-to-source reclaimed wood.
The highlight of being here was getting to see the birdhouses that Luke and Jeff have been making. These are the ones that haven’t sold yet. I’m sure they won’t be on the market for long.
I want to say thanks to Jeff, Luke, Danny and Josh for letting me poke around their space and ask a million questions. It was a truly inspiring visit!
Appreciated. So good to see guys like Jeff getting it in.
at the woodshop, how was he transferring the stencil to the wood? and does the car fluid keep the brushes with a really slick tip, or does it just help them stay clean? lastly, was it a sable brush? sorry, was floored by this post.
Hi Thomas,
The stencil can be transferred in a variety of ways, in this particular case he used an electric pouncer, which is a device that you trace over a drawing to produce tiny holes. A white or black powder is then patted onto the surface through the sketch. There are a few more photos here.
The brushes used are lettering quills, longish square ended brushes that are dragged flat to make straight lines and twisted to make curves. The transmission fluid keeps the brushes from drying out and is removed with mineral spirits before painting.
Hope this answers the questions…
[...] checking out Jeff Canham’s Woodshop studio, I headed over to General Store, where I found this terrarium [...]