Solvent smell is the first thing students complain about. Wait till they learn about the lead.
Had a new student yesterday, first day, and she walks in and says "how do you breathe in here?" I told her open a window, and anyway we're only in oils two days a week, the rest is drawing. She looked at the rack of drying canvases like they were going to get her.
I remember being that age and convinced the fumes would rot my brain. Now I've painted in studios that smelled of turpentine for thirty years and honestly the only thing that's happened is I can't stand the smell of fresh linen. Priorities shift.
But it made me think about how we guard the young ones. My atelier master smoked a pipe while he ground his own lead white. We've come a long way from that and I'm glad. Still, there's something in me that misses the old seriousness about materials, the ritual of it. These days everyone wants water-soluble oils and quick-dry mediums and I get it, I really do, but paint takes the time it takes. You can't fix patience with a product.
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The linen thing made me laugh, sorry. Priorities really do shift.
I'm in pastels mostly so my version of this is the dust, and people act like I'm handling asbestos. A student once asked me if she should wear a mask and I said it's pigment, not plutonium, and then I spent the rest of the day wondering if I was being careless. I think part of it is we all got told the horror stories as if they were one size fits all, and nobody ever says "here's the actual reasonable precaution, now stop worrying and paint."
But the bit about guarding the young ones, that's the real point. I never had an atelier master, I came to it late, so I was guarding myself and doing it badly out of books. I'd love to know what your old master actually did besides the pipe. Was it all tough love or did he ever actually protect you from anything?
The dust thing is real though. I'm charcoal mostly and I breathe that stuff in like it's air, which it basically is at this point. My whole studio is grey and I probably have a third of a drawing in my lungs by now.
But yeah, the horror stories thing. I never had an atelier master, I taught myself, so I got all my fear from the internet. Spent years convinced every material was slowly killing me and then one day I just thought, ok, either this kills me or the not-making-it does, and I picked my poison. Probably not the healthiest framing but it got me painting.
Also I want to know what the pip part of that comment was gonna say, that story got cut off right at the good bit 😂
"Either this kills me or the not-making-it does", I've heard versions of that from so many painters, and it's never not true. The thing nobody tells you is that the fear of the materials is easier to live with than the fear of the empty canvas, and at least the first one has a solution involving a window.
Charcoal though. My hands are permanently grey from drawing classes and I still never thought about what I was breathing until a student mentioned it last year. Now I can't unsee it. Thirty years of oils and it's the charcoal that gets you in the end.
And no, don't tell me the paint keeps you safe. I've seen your hands. 🙂
Pastels are a different beast, fair enough. I've always been tempted by them but I'm too attached to the drag of paint, and pastel has never given me that. Though the dust thing, yeah. Nobody ever says "here's the actual reasonable precaution." When I was training it was all fear and folklore. My master smoked a pipe over his palette. We've swung hard the other way, which I suppose is progress, but somewhere in the middle is where the useful information lives.
And you're right that the guarding part is the real question. I think about what I actually protect my students from and it's less the materials than the discouragement. The fumes clear. The voice in your head telling you it's no good, that one stays until you learn to argue with it.