14 Dumb Art-Related Accidents (and 3 Easy Ways to Avoid Them)

You know how some folks say when accidents happen while making art, you should work with them to create something beautiful and unexpected? We’re not talking about those kinds of happy accidents.

This month I’m continuing on from my last post (and continuing to rip off that hardware blog I was working on for a client at my day job).  I had meant this post to be a list of safety tips for avoiding booboo’s while you’re painting (or sculpting, and so on). But instead, I ended up recalling all the accidents (one or two of which really were quite serious) I’ve had in the painting factory over the years.

The sad thing is that when it came down to actually listing the tips for avoiding these mishaps, it really only came down to just three (super basic and obvious) things. Anyhow, my hope in sharing these experiences and bits of advice with you today is so that you can avoid such things in your own practice so that you can stay safe.

(Although really, unless you’re as clumsy x accident prone x Calamity Jane as I am, I trust you won’t need them.)
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14 (stupid, really, if you think about it) art-related accidents

So yeah these are some really idiotic things that have happened to me (or I’ve done to myself) not just in the studio but also at art school or during art projects. (This list doesn’t include things like um. Going to the ER because I drank one enerdrink too many and things like that.)

1. Cutting the tip of my thumb off.

So I was releasing my paper from the plywood ~ while watching a movie (which I’m pretty sure I’d already seen a bazillion times before by then) and yeah. The really odd thing was watching it kind of grow back, I remember there was like a ‘tiny thumb top’ growing out of it.

2. Burning myself with a glue gun.

Thankfully it was just getting molten glue dropping on me ~ I think it’d’ve been worse if I’d poked myself with an active glue gun tip.
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3. Glueing my hand to the bottle of glue.

Okay so this one didn’t happen at home. I was in the sculpture hall back at art school (long after I graduated) trying to help out with an exhibit for that illustrator’s group I used to hang out with (and recently am trying to hang back out with).

We were making foam sculptures and we were using something called Greco 888 which was, I understood, super strong glue they use for making shoes. (Let’s put it like this ~ a drop of it fell on the studio’s concrete floor and there was smoke, okay.)

Anyway, I very stupidly managed to get my hand stuck to the bottle. It took two people quite, a, while to very patiently use acetone or whatever to pry my fingers off of it. It hurt like the dickens ~ but not as much as my pride and you know ~ because I wasted the group’s time and resources (i.e., two workers).
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4. Poking myself with sharp objects.

So yeah I’ve poked myself with sharp pencils and palette knives stored upright in cups and things? While either pulling one of them out or shoving something back in. Don’t think I ever drew blood, though.
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5. Cutting myself with a palette knife.

This one was really stupid, I confess. I wasn’t even painting nor cleaning the knife, which, for all these long years, I have never cut myself doing. I was simply monkeying around with it (making like I was cleaning x wiping it off my lap) and I ended up slashing myself across the thigh. Smart.

6. Having canvas fall on me.

This doesn’t sound so bad ~ unless it’s a good-sized box-type canvas with plywood backing and it slams you on the top of your head. I think the canvas might have been at least 2 x 3’ (60.96 x 91.44 cm) or bigger; anyway it made me a bit dizzy there ^^
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7. Inhaling spray paint.

This, in spite of the fact I was doing this outdoors. Very stupidly, I had a fan on which was, you know, oscillating, and the thing had swung back to face me just as I had sprayed, blowing the paint back at me. That made me dizzy (like nasty dizzy). Didn’t kill me, though, so it’s all good ^^
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8. Sitting on a wet oil palette.

So I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the jillablog how oil is ridiculously difficult to wash out of your clothes. This is how I found out ~ one of the bazillions of things you learn at art school, lol.

9. Breaking my glass palette.

So yeah the problem with glass palettes (although they are the best in the business) is they’re glass. I had a huge glass palette which was originally a triangular piece of glass we used to use as a corner table in the living room (the longest side was about 2 and a half feet (76.2 cm).

If I’m not mistaken I broke it by stepping on it. (No, it wasn’t that thin, but I guess there’s another reason I call myself ele-feet sometimes.) (Oddly, I still have the shards ~ don’t know why since they’re too dangerous to use -_-)
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10. Wrecking my tools.

While it’s true your brushes and so on do get ‘worn and torn’ with regular use, sometimes they die before their time ~ just like one of my favourite palette knives which I accidentally killed because I left it lying around and the equivalent of a ‘chest freezer being dropped on your chest’ happened to it </3
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11. Dipping my brush into my coffee.

Or tea, or whatever beverage you’ve got with you in the painting factory (this is an argument in favour of cans or bottles (unless you’re ridiculously accurate lol). This is probably the most common studio accident I know or have heard other artists say they’ve done but it’s just funny and apart from the waste does no harm, really.

12. Spills (thrills, laughs, games ^^).

This is probably another common and relatively harmless but extremely annoying studio accident ~ depending of course on what you spilled and how much of a hassle it is to clean up.
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​13. Tearing my shoulder and wrecking my wrist hefting plywood.

So yeah, this is probably my worst accident (or one of them, anyway) which I had to pay for with months of therapy (among other things). The piece of plywood in question is about, oh, four foot square (121.92 cm) or so and about half to three-quarters of an inch (1.27 to 1.9 cm) thick I guess.

It’s kind of heavy and yeah so I was perched atop my desk in the middle of the night propping it up against the wall as a sort of makeshift easel. My left hand is stronger than my right so I generally use it more for hefting ~ but see, it’s less accurate so I, kind of just dropped the plywood.

Fortunately (thank you Guardian Angel) I had just enough presence of mind to not want to fall backwards off of my desk (which would have been a disaster). So I kind of caught the full weight of the plywood at an awkward angle with my right hand (which killed my right wrist).

So yeah, working was sheer murder for a while after that ~ and since I had been cramming for a show (plus working a day job) I didn’t have time to get it fixed and just had to live with it. And when I did have time to get my wrist checked out the orthopaedic guy said I had to stick it in a cast and I said like hell I was gonna do that; my show was coming up and I was nowhere near finished 0_o

(And that, my friends, is how art teaches you to talk yourself into not feeling anything LOL)
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14. Cutting my foot open on a shard of acrylic sheet.

This one wasn’t exactly in the studio but happened arguably as a result of being in it. I had this box made of acrylic sheet in the bathroom and as I was drying myself off after a shower my foot slipped smack dab onto the edge, breaking it into shards and cutting my foot. Genius.
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How these flashes of genius really could have been avoided

As I said, it all really only boils down to these three utterly basic safety tips.
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1. Pay attention. ​

Numbers 1 through 8 were really just a result of inattention and carelessness. Just paying attention and focusing on whatever it is you’re doing can save you an awful lot of grief. (Good grief.)
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2. Keep your painting factory neat and tidy.

I know, I know, this isn’t always easy or even feasible, but it does make a whole lot of sense. (And, if I remember right (this was about two or three articles or so ago for me), this was one of the safety tips in the hardware article.)

Numbers 9 through 12 might have been avoided if the palette and palette knife hadn’t been on the ground, or if things weren’t underfoot (or within arm’s reach ^^). Of course these things can’t be helped sometimes if you’re working in a very small studio ~ which is all the more reason to tidy up as you go.

3. Get enough sleep. ​

Numbers 13 and 14 happened because I was sleepy, okay? That time I cut my foot in the bathroom, I’d been up nights, then, too (which is why I said ‘arguably, yadda yadda’).

There’s a reason why accidents happen when folks fall asleep behind the wheel or while operating heavy machinery ~ which one might say isn’t a whole lot unlike making things in the painting factory. Getting enough sleep is probably the ‘safest’ safety tip for doing work in the studio ~ it can help with focusing and paying attention, too.


Okay so I think I’ve embarrassed myself long enough here ~ but seriously I hope this helps even a little bit. And please ~ seeing as how I can barely stay on the safe side of studio practice ~ I would very much appreciate any further advice you can share to help keep jill and other artists accident-free <3
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