Derek Laufman
Cats and comics The artist shows off the creative cave where he escapes the dreary winter blues
I’ve always wanted a studio with natural light, so when my wife Valerie and I went searching for a new house in 2012, I knew I’d found the place I’d call my creative home.
Located above our two-car garage, it was the ideal space to escape a noisy family with two active boys. I’ll start my day at 9am going through emails and messages for about 30 minutes, then it’s time to get down to the business of drawing.
I set up two workstations in my studio to help me tackle both digital and traditional work. I’m about 80 per cent digital these days and at the core of my setup is a Wacom Cintiq 27QHD tablet, which has been going strong for the past nine years, and I’m thankful for its reliability. I flank it on the left with a vertical 24-inch monitor for reference images, and just above sits a 32-inch 4K monitor mounted to an ergo arm, which allows me to swivel it round to my traditional drawing area as well. That’s often playing YouTube videos as I work.