I keep a scrap of primed linen in my pocket like an old man with his rosary
There is a piece of primed linen in the pocket of my painting coat, about the size of a playing card. It has been there since maybe February. When I am stuck, and I mean really stuck, three hours on an elbow that will not sit right, I take it out and I rub my thumb across the weave. That is all I do. Then I put it back and pick up the brush again, and usually the thing I was fighting is not the thing that was wrong anyway.
My daughter finds this hilarious. She says it is a worry stone for a woman who has forgotten how to worry properly. She is not entirely wrong.
What I like about it is that it is the one object in the studio that asks nothing of me. Every other thing in the room is a job. The palette has to be scraped, the turps jar is a disgrace, there is a tube of lead white I have been nursing along for two weeks like a sick relative. The linen scrap just sits there. It is primed, it is dry, it is fine.
I mention it because I read somewhere this week that you are supposed to have a morning routine with cold water and a notebook and I thought, no, my ritual is a square of fabric in a pocket. Bof. Whatever works.
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the thumb across the weave thing. half of what I do is just touching the surface until my hand knows something my head doesn't yet, and it sounds fake until you've done it. I keep a snapped piece of a palette knife in my apron for roughly the same reason, no ritual to it, I just feel the break in the blade and the elbow usually sorts itself out.
your daughter's line is good though, worry stone for someone who forgot how to worry. that's the whole job honestly, redirect the worry into the material so it stops sitting on the work.
A snapped palette knife is better than my linen, honestly. It has a history in it. Mine is just a square of nothing yet.
Yes to the hand knowing first. I spent years trying to think my way out of a problem that was never in the thinking part. The hand is faster and it does not lie to you the way the head does. Touching the surface is not a trick, it is checking in with the only instrument that actually knows how the paint behaves.
And that is c'est ça, redirect the worry into the material. The worrying has to go somewhere. Put it in the paint and it becomes work. Leave it in the head and it just sits there and rots.