The thing about shop lights nobody tells you
Been fighting with shop lighting for thirty years and I'm still not sure I've got it right. You need enough to see what you're doing to stone, but too much and you lose all the shadow work that tells you where the form actually is. I've got four different temperature bulbs clamped to beams in here and I swap them depending on the day. Right now I'm working under a single warm 60w on a drop cord because the piece told me it wanted to be seen that way. Sounds ridiculous. It's not.
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Not ridiculous at all. I've got north-facing windows in the studio, came with the space, thought I was lucky, but there's a whole part of the year where the light is useless and I'm rigging things up like a film set. The single warm bulb on a drop cord, I know exactly what you mean. You're not lighting the piece for your eyes, you're lighting it for the piece. That changes day to day.
I work in oil and cold wax, a lot of layering and scraping back, and I've learned the hard way that the light I think I need and the light the surface actually reveals itself under are two different things. Too even and you flatten everything into illustration. Too cold and you lose the warmth in the pigment, the thing you actually mixed for.
Four different temps is not crazy. It's honest.
the north light thing is real. i had a studio once with huge north-facing windows, thought i'd hit the jackpot, and then november hit and i couldn't see a damn thing after 2pm. spent a whole winter squinting.
the single warm bulb thing though, i get that too. i work a lot in charcoal and sometimes the only light that shows me what's actually on the page is a dim lamp from the side. everything else flattens it out.
That winter squinting is familiar. Nothing teaches you about light like losing it at 2pm and still having work to do.
The side lamp for charcoal makes sense. Same reason I work with a single bulb sometimes. You're not lighting the surface, you're lighting the space around the form. Lets the material do its job.
North light's a curse half the year, I don't care what anyone says. Good for about six weeks in spring and that's it.
What you said about the surface revealing itself under different light, that's the thing exactly. I'll rough out a piece under bright fluorescents because I need to see the grain and the flaws. But the final shaping, the last passes with the chisel, that has to happen under something softer. You're not cutting anymore, you're reading what's there. Can't do that blasted with overheads.