If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live the life of a full-time artist in Napa County, now’s the time to explore the possibilities.

Napa Valley Open Studios (Saturday-Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; also Sept. 29-30; www.nvopenstudios.com) offers visitors the chance to enjoy not only the work of 90 visual artists, but a glimpse into many of their homes — and the way each household has made room for the creative process.

Home studios can be as simple as a spare room or as elaborate as a dedicated outbuilding. They may overlook a busy street, an open field or nothing in particular; nearly all have wide windows to capture the abundant natural light that has always attracted artists to California.

A peaceful corner

“In this corner of Napa, I found the most peaceful place to work,” said Oscar Aguilar Olea, who paints and draws in the front room of the very last house on Penny Lane, off Imola Avenue on the east side of Napa (studio number 14 on the tour).

From his bay window, its ledges lined with painting materials, Aguilar Olea can see birds, the occasional deer, pumpkins growing in a field across the way.

“It’s incredible to keep in contact with nature” while working, said Aguilar Olea, who also finds himself thinking about the vintage home where he lives and paints: “a story, I can imagine, from more than 50 years.”

Aguilar Olea’s own story is a wide-ranging and ultimately tender one: A co-founder of the populist Grupo Suma muralist collective in 1970s Mexico City, he exhibited with the group in Paris but later stepped back from the avant-garde to concentrate on Renaissance techniques including oils, etchings, drawings and woodcuts.

At an exhibition of his works in Sinaloa, Mexico, he met a childhood friend who had been living and teaching in the Napa Valley for the past two decades.

The two fell in love, and three years ago Aguilar Olea moved into the little Napa house with his wife Azalea Aguilar, who teaches Spanish language and literature at Vintage High School.

“When I found this house I got rid of almost everything I had, because I wanted to have space for his work,” she said.

“For him to leave everything in Mexico and move here, it’s more than enough for me to do that.”

This will be the Aguilars’ third year in the Open Studios tour. The couple’s home is cozy and comfortable, with an upright piano in the living room and cheerful colors everywhere.

Out back, Aguilar Olea raises chickens for their eggs, an ingredient in egg tempera for fresco painting — another Renaissance technique he has mastered and plans to teach in workshops.

To find the Aguilars’ home and studio, follow Penny Lane to the very end, past all the turns, and look for the bright green Open Studios sign. Works for sale will range from nudes, their reclining curves evoking North Bay skylines, to drypoint etchings on biblical themes.

Home, studio, gallery, edifice

Nick Cann’s studio is also in the front room, but of a very different house on a much busier Napa street. The veteran artist and illustrator lives with his wife Peggy, a retired scientist, in a rambling vernacular two-story on Yajome Street where it meets Lincoln Avenue (studio number 24).

Like Aguilar Olea, Cann watches out his window for the occasional passing wildlife: skateboarders on their way to New Technology High.

“It’s a great street,” he said.

But much of the time, Cann is looking down at the light table where he creates the elaborately detailed line drawings that have made him a sought-after illustrator for the past four decades.

Painted a dark green-gray and lined with shelving for art supplies, Cann’s studio is reminiscent of a tidy riot: The top of one cabinet is crowded with found objects, including fuzzy seed pods and “animal eyes” from a craft shop.

Many of these items make their way into Cann’s work, which is displayed throughout the couple’s comfortable home.

“I don’t have to worry about decorating, do I?” Peggy Cann said with a laugh.

Open Studios visitors will see the name plaque Cann created for Johnny Carson in 1971 (he’s also worked with singers Diana Ross, on a stage set, and Blossom Dearie, for an album cover), an etched ostrich egg from 1974 and dozens of newer works.

“One of the reasons we bought this particular house is that there are a lot of small rooms, which means there are a lot of walls, which is great for displaying art,” said his wife.

In back of the Canns’ house, originally built as a cottage in the 19th century and later expanded in the Craftsman style, stands a vintage water tower the couple purchased and moved from Second Street.

Forty feet tall, with windows added at the top, the tower affords a splendid view of Napa in all its diversity, from the nearby wrecking yard to the hills beyond.

“It’s an adult tree house,” Cann said, smiling. The tower also provides storage for memorabilia from his career dating back to the mid-1960s, when he was an illustrator for Hollywood films like “Ice Station Zebra.”

Cann won’t be displaying work in the tower, but Open Studios visitors will find his one of the few stops on the tour where artwork spills over to the second floor of the house.

Laurel Street seclusion

One of several studios along Napa’s Laurel Street that will be open for the two weekends, painter J. Panter’s workspace is surprisingly secluded for its location at a busy Old Town intersection.

Located behind her home at 487 Jefferson Street, Panter’s studio (number 4 on the tour) is reached through a gate on the Laurel side. Decorated with vintage license plates, the gate opens to an expanded former carriage house that Panter has renovated with her husband Tom, a computer programmer.

The couple recycled what they could from the original 1920s structure, including old redwood beams and a massive cabinet Panter refinished, mounted on casters and now uses to store her myriad art supplies.

Panter and her husband also had to hire a house lifter and install a new foundation before they could ready the studio’s interior, which now includes a double sink with ample counter area, a capacious worktable and a set of shelves crowded with art books and magazines.

“I designed the (etched concrete) floor, and my husband and I did the acid etch and the coloring ourselves,” said Panter, who found some other elements — including a round window, with frame, for a song — at antique shops around the region. A corrugated-metal pitched roof adds a rustic note.

Panter’s studio may be the only one on the tour that adjoins a rabbit-proof yard: She and her husband share their home with two energetic house rabbits that frequently visit the studio during their supervised time on the lawn.

Don’t expect to see them hopping around during Open Studios, though. Panter says over the tour’s two weekends, her central Napa location can draw 75 people a day — some with dogs — so the rabbits will amuse themselves in the couple’s main residence until visiting hours are over.

Panter’s guests will find a variety of artworks at a range of prices, from framed landscapes and nudes to bird studies and colorful, small-scale paintings inspired by the images on Lotería cards. There’s also the chance to enter in a drawing for a painting Panter plans to give away Sept. 29, the last day of the tour.

Once slated for an in-law unit by previous owners (a plan doomed by the fact that it sits on the lot line), the Laurel Street studio is spacious enough that Panter has invited two other artists to exhibit with her: Maureen Savage will show works in charcoal and oils, while Jenna Chandler will display her beaded jewelry.

90 artists, 60 studios

In all, 90 artists will take part in this year’s Open Studios, exhibiting at 60 locations. The www.nvopenstudios.com Web site and a printed guide available at local sponsoring businesses list all the participating artists and their studio addresses; the Web site also offers an interactive tool that allows visitors to design their own tours.

To further aid visitors during both Open Studios weekends, Arts Council Napa Valley, Open Studios’ sponsor, will maintain an event headquarters at the Napa Mill, 500 Main Street in Napa.

Two outlying hospitality centers — restored Airstream trailers — will be located in the parking lot at 951 California Boulevard at First Street, Napa ,and at 1506 Lincoln Ave. at Fairway, Calistoga, next to the Chamber of Commerce. The toll-free Open Studios hotline is 888-850-6665.