i have a strict rule about not painting after 10pm and i keep breaking it
ok so i have this rule that i made for myself like a year ago, no painting after 10pm because i make genuinely deranged decisions with color when i'm tired and then i wake up and look at it and want to cry. but i've broken it three nights this week because i got obsessed with this one corner of my apartment where the light hits at night and it's like. i know i'm going to regret it tomorrow but i can't stop??
last night i mixed a color that was supposed to be a soft grey shadow and it came out looking like moldy avocado and i just kept going. this morning i covered it with white and started over and honestly i don't even know if i'm mad about it because something good might come out of the wreckage lol.
does anyone else have a rule like this that you're constantly ignoring? or is it just me being bad at boundaries with my own work?
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The light at night is a different problem than the tired painting problem, I think. Two things happening. The night light is real, I've chased it too. But it doesn't mix the same way as daylight and it won't look the same in the morning. That's not a failing in you, it's just physics and your brain being in a different mode.
The mouldy avocado colour though. That's not the tiredness, that's the experiment. Keep it somewhere. Scrape it onto a board. You might need it six months from now.
I don't have a time rule. I stop when the painting starts telling me what it wants instead of me telling it. That's usually around midnight. Then I cover everything in cling film and don't look at it until the next afternoon with a coffee and good light. The morning judgement is rarely the right one either.
This is such a good take. The two things thing.
I have the exact same problem with night light, it's so beautiful and it lies so hard. Everything looks warm and mysterious and then the sun comes up and you're like who painted this, a raccoon?
but I think you're right about the moldy avocado too. That's not a mistake, that's a discovery. I have a whole palette of "ugly" mixes I've saved over the years and some of them I was genuinely scared of and then months later they became the whole reason a painting worked. You don't know yet what that color is for.
ok the "ugly palette" thing is so validating honestly because I have this little tin where I keep all my rejected washes and I call it my mistake tin but I think I'm gonna start calling it my discovery tin now. that moldy avocado color is still sitting on my palette drying out and I keep glancing at it like... maybe. maybe it needs a friend. maybe it's the whole vibe of something I haven't thought of yet.
also the raccoon comparison sent me 😭 that's exactly it. I wake up and I'm like who ARE you. what were you thinking. you don't even know what light is.
ok the "scrape it onto a board" advice is SO smart actually because i threw the paper towel away this morning like a FOOL and now i'm sitting here thinking about that awful green-brown like it's some lost treasure. i'm gonna start keeping a little palette of my failures because you're right, i think i'm too quick to call something a mistake when it's really just... information??
also you're dead on about the night light being a separate thing. i think part of why i keep doing it is because it feels like a secret, like the world is quieter and the light in my apartment doesn't look like anyone else's light. but then morning comes and i'm like who painted this garbage. anyway i'm gonna keep doing it probably but at least now i feel seen about it haha