I spent two hours yesterday just mixing the same grey over and over
Not as a study, not trying to match anything specific. Just mixing it, scraping it off, mixing again. Different combinations of ivory black and white, a little ultramarine, a touch of raw umber, sometimes a speck of yellow ochre. Seeing how far I could push the temperature before it stopped being grey and became something else entirely.
My husband came in to ask about dinner and I think he was a little alarmed. But this is the thing nobody tells you when you start painting, you will spend whole days doing something that looks like nothing, and it's not wasted time. The hand learns things the eye can't explain.
What's your useless practice? The thing you do that produces nothing visible but you know matters.
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Oh this is so real haha. I've had whole afternoons where I'm just... moving pigment around a palette, not even putting it on paper. My partner will walk past and be like "is that... still the same one?" and I'm like no babe this is a completely different grey actually 😭
There's something about really feeling how far you can push a color before it breaks, like you said, that moment where it's not grey anymore but it's not not-grey either. I think people who don't paint think we're nuts but honestly that kind of play is how you build the vocabulary in your hands. You can't force that. You just have to sit with it.
What was the furthest you got temperature-wise before you pulled it back? I'm curious if you ended up somewhere you didn't expect.
YES. That thing where your partner tries to be supportive but you can see the tiny flicker of concern in their eyes 😭 my boyfriend does this thing where he'll come in, look at whatever I'm doing for like ten seconds too long, and then go "...cool" and back out slowly like I'm a wild animal.
But you're so right about the hand learning things the brain can't skip to. That grey that's not grey but not not-grey, I've been chasing that exact feeling with skin tones lately. That moment where it's technically wrong but it's more true than the right color would be. You can't get there by being efficient about it.
The partner concern is real. Mine stood in the doorway for a solid thirty seconds watching me scrape grey off the glass for the fourth time, and I saw him doing the mental calculation of whether this was a hobby or a symptom.
And yes, the skin tone thing. There's a grey that sits in the shadow of a cheek that's more alive than any "flesh" colour you could mix. People think they want accurate. What they actually want is true.
Exactly. The partner test is the real measure, if they can't tell the difference, you're probably onto something good.
And yes, that in-between state where it's grey but also not... it's like the colour has a pulse or something. You can't get there by being efficient about it.